A UFO Sighting Account in Arlington Heights, Illinois
by Mark Bostrom
On a clear night, a friend of mine and I were trying to see Saturn’s rings through his telescope as we stood in the middle of Belmont Avenue in Arlington Heights. Steve Hayward was a student at John Hersey High School. I was a student at Thomas Junior High School, which is now known as Thomas Middle School. Steve decided to get a bigger eyepiece lens for his telescope. As I watched him walk into the front doorway of his family’s house on the west side of Belmont Avenue, I had this feeling that something was behind me. I turned around and instantly saw this large, flat disc approaching from the northeast sky. The disc — about the size of a medium commercial jet — was moving northeast to southwest. Mysteriously, there were perfect “hyphens” or “dashes” emitted out the rear of the UFO. A buzzing, sparking noise coincided with each luminous ‘dash’ that ejected from a rear rectangle (like an “exhaust”) as the disc glided across the sky. The luminous dashes were like perfect hyphens that matched the illuminated lightning-like color of the disc. I stood in awe, as I watched this purely-illuminated disc cross the sky. I am guessing, but it’s altitude was probably 1,500 to 2,000 feet It was too high in the sky, but it was so real, I almost felt I could touch it.
As the disc reached the horizon over the rooftops of houses, I sprinted south down Belmont Avenue to Lynnwood Avenue, where I hoped I could catch another glimpse of the disc on the west horizon down the end of Lynnwood Avenue. To my disappointment, the disc was gone. Even as a child I think I instantly knew it would be unlikely that I would see something this spectacular in the sky in my life again. I went into my family’s house, feeling emotional because I knew people would think I was making up this story about this fantastic disc that I just saw pass our neighborhood. My parents said they believed me, which was reassuring. The next day there was some validation to my experience. The following morning, WGN Radio announcer Wally Phillips gave a news account of numerous sightings overnight of UFOs traveling in two’s and three’s from Minnesota to Florida and states in between. My mom and dad heard Wally Phillip’s news account on the clock radio on their nightstand in the bedroom as my dad was getting ready to go to work. They called me into the bedroom to tell me what they just heard on the radio. The exact year, day and date of the Arlington Heights UFO sighting is unknown, but it probably occurred between 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m in the year 1969. The UFO sighting had to have occurred during or before 1969 because my dad was talking to his dad, who died in early February 1970. It’s unlikely the sighting was in January or February 1970. I am sure I spent a period during decent weather immediately after the sighting, searching the skies and hoping to catch a glimpse of this disc again. I never saw it again.
Experts (that did not see the object) explained that the sightings were caused by ball lightning. The pictures of ball lightning that I looked up in books at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library didn’t look anything like what I saw.
UFO flight path from northeast to southwest over Arlington Heights.
UFO Flight Path is shown as the blue arrow. Point of observation (red push-pin, approx. 42.10469, -87.97796 lat/long) is directly south of the middle of the flight path in the center of the north-south street (Belmont Avenue). The observer ran south to next east-west street (Lynwood Avenue) to see if the UFO would be visible again near the lower horizon of the streetscape, but no further sighting occurred. The neighborhood is just south of Palatine Road between Arlington Heights Road and Rand Road. The neighborhood is also just north of Thomas Middle School in Arlington Heights. For a street view of the area, check the link to Google Street View.
The UFO disk was a bluish-white illumination very similar to the color appearance of lightning. There were no distinguishing marks or configurations, except the rectangle at the rear of the object. The altitude angle (~50-60°) of the object appeared to be about as low as any aircraft that use the 14L runway approach to O’Hare International Airport, but there is no way this was a conventional aircraft. O’Hare runway 14L/32R is about 7.8 miles from this observed location. The buzzing, sparking noise did not have a noticeable delay from the sighting of the coinciding ‘dash’ ejecting from the rear of the described rectangle (indicates close proximity at speed of sound). Also an audio panning effect from left to right was noticed as the ‘dash’ ejected from left to right. The noise volume also faded as the light intensity of the ‘dash’ faded. The ‘dashes’ numbered about six (but could have been greater along the whole path in the sky) and ejected in an irregular rhythm. Each ‘dash’ faded to darkness (no longer visible leaving the object) at about 1.0 to 1.5 times the diameter of the disk in a line directly opposite the direction of the UFO. Assuming they were some sort of propulsion-related objects and ejecting irregularly, it immediately seemed ironic that the UFO was cruising along very smoothly. Because of the high altitude of the object at its nearest path, it was impossible to detect a vertical dimension of the object. The disk did not pulsate, did not change size or shape, did not change color or light intensity, and did not show any change regarding pitch, roll or yaw. The sighting of the straight-line path of the UFO lasted less than 15 seconds.
Considering the symmetry of the disk and the distinct rectangle at the rear of the object, it seems unlikely that the object was ball lightning (‘ball lightning’ in Wikipedia). The image in the UFO sighting did not appear similar to the images with random features as collected in ball lightning (Google images). Ball lightning doesn’t eject dashes out of a symmetrical, unchanging rectangle out of the rear of a precise disc.
Flash forward to UFO images from New Mexico and Minnesota released by the CIA in 2016 …
Holloman Air Force Base UFO 1964.
Remarkably similar to the Arlington Heights sighting: An unidentified flying object photographed by a government employee over the Holloman Air Development Center in New Mexico in 1964 was published in an AOL story in March 2008 (UFO Photos Draw National Attention AOL Posted: 2008-03-29 23:08:5).
Black-and-white UFO documented in October 1960 in Minnesota and released by the CIA in January 2016. To this day, this photo remains unexplained.
Nike Radar Stations in Arlington Heights Picked Up UFO’s in 1958. A notable UFO report on several UFO websites shows that the Arlington Heights, Illinois Nike Base was the last radar station to track extremely fast UFO’s that were lost on radar screens about 150 miles west of the Arlington Heights location after they approached from the east. Six UFO’s were originally sighted at about 2:00 p.m. in June or July of 1958 over the Atlantic Ocean east of Montauk Point (southern tip of Long Island, New York). Traveling a straight line at speeds of 1300 to 1400 miles per hour, they traversed roughly a straight line past radar stations in Montauk (Camp Hero), New York; Saratoga Springs, New York; Benton, Pennsylvania and Arlington Heights, Illinois. Montauk Air Force Station is associated with a number of myths and conspiracy theories associating the Montauk Air Force Station with UFOs, space aliens, a secret world government, time travel, mind control, and global weather manipulation.
MONTAUK POINT UFO EVENT WITH REFERENCE TO ARLINGTON HEIGHTS NIKE BASE
A GCI (ground control intercept) radar operator is working an exercise in cooperation with the Strategic Air Command. His call sign is “Dora” and the site number is “P-9.” It is June or July of 1958. The time of day is approximately 2 PM.“Out there on Long Island, that is where this thing started. [The] very tip of Long Island is called Montauk Point. They had a radar. I was down here at Highlands, New Jersey [McGuire AFB]. We had one up here at Saratoga Springs, New York. We had one in Benton, Pennsylvania and this one over here … we used to call it Blue Knob … over near Pittsburgh someplace …”
“This thing started probably around 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Montauk Point started to pick up these [six] targets [over the Atlantic]. They had a 250-mile range. They started pickin’ them up about 200 miles and they tracked them in south of their radar. They got about half way down the Island and we picked them up … They was just north of New York City [by about 15 miles] and continued across Pennsylvania. Saratoga Springs picked them up. Benton, Pennsylvania picked them up and then Arlington Heights [Illinois] picked ’em up – and it was almost a straight line – and Arlington Heights lost ’em about 150 miles west of [them]. That’s the last radar that saw them.”
Fighter aircraft were launched from Newcastle, Delaware but were unable to locate the targets. This is understandable because the targets were estimated to be traveling at between 1300 and 1400 miles per hour at an altitude estimated by the “RAW” radar to be above 75,000 feet.
This event was, at the time, “highly classified.”
Captain Lloyd W. Chamberlain was the operations officer. Sgt. Henry J. Olson was also a witness at this site.
In 1959 the NIKE base at Central Road and Wilke Road in Arlington Heights, just south of Northwest Community Hospital, became a more advanced Missile Master guidance system. In 1960 the village population was 27,878. The NIKE base became fully operational as five radar towers with golf ball-like domes were constructed and used for a long-range air defense radar unit. In 1961 The 45th Artillery Bridade Air Defense (NIKE base) was manned by about 1000 soldiers. The 755th Air Control & Warning Squadron relocated to the Arlington Heights NIKE base from Williams Bay Air Force Station in Wisconsin. The NIKE base radar towers were dismantled in the 1970’s, when the radar system became obsolete.
Other Remarkable UFO Sightings
CLTV Interview with Jon Hilkevitch (Chicago Tribune Transportation Writer) who broke the story of the November 7, 2006 UFO sighting at O’Hare International Airport in an article published on January 1, 2007.
Audio Interview with Anonymous Taxi Mechanic who witnessed the November 7, 2006 O’Hare sighting in a radio interview on the Jeffe Rense Show on December 12, 2006. (Rense.com).
Mexican Air Force Patrol
On May 13, 2004 Jaime Maussan, journalist, released his interview of Mexican Air Force pilots showing an infrared video footage from a military air patrol on March 05, 2004 against drug smuggling, that shows at least 11 very hot “spheres” moving irregularly with apparent great speed. The objects could not be seen with the naked eye, neither the crew on board nor ground personnel confirmed any radar contact with the objects in question. The crew of the Mexican Air Force Merlin C26/A detected the objects following them and surrounding them at about 17:00 hours. The encounter occurred near Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche.
Some critics have explained that the objects were actually flares from oil platforms reflected into clouds, or a military drill involving flares that were dropped from aircraft.
See also …
The Cardinal CIA Releases De-Classified UFO Photos and Documents; Minnesota Photo Matches Arlington Heights, Illinois Sighting
Arlingtoncards.com/ufo