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Classic Mysteries—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, June 2016


Kentucky UFO light-beam case

by: Brent Raynes


On May 10, 1975, sometime between 9 and 10 p.m., in Florence, Kentucky, a 15-year-old Chuck Doyle was outside searching for his 8-year-old gelding, that was located at the far end of a three acre pasture, when he noticed a buzzing sound, something that sounded rather like a swarm of bees. Turning around, as the noise had been behind him, he observed what he described as a “manta ray” shaped form, which he guessed was about 20 feet long and 10 feet from wing tip to wing tip, hovering twenty feet in the air above his neighbor's vegetable garden, an estimated eighty feet distance. The object bobbed up and down a bit like a cork on water, and the youth noticed a vibration in the ground. He also noted two light sources on the object, one that was a steady green, resembling a green traffic light, located underneath the object, what he assumed was the front portion, and then there was a brick red colored light as what he saw as the manta's tail section.

Young Doyle said he watched this remarkable sight in stunned awe for about two minutes. Then the object projected a laser like darker green beam of light, perhaps an olive green he noted, stating that “it poked around the bushes in the neighbor's yard.” Next the beam began to take in a wider area, projecting around the gardens nearby and the yard, and then it fell upon his family's swimming pool and it stopped there for a moment, as though it was observing the water vapors rising up from the pool water. During this period of time, Doyle noticed that the light poles and wiring that led to lines under the pool deck were aglow with a bluish illumination. “This I had seen before,” the young man told UFO investigator Leonard Stringfield. “Probably it was St. Elmo's fire.” However, when the ufologist pointed out how it was a bit strange for something like that to appear during the UFO sighting, the young man admitted it was even odder perhaps considering that the light unit wasn't even plugged in.

“Then the beam came at me,” Doyle noted, thus beginning the strangest part of his story. He explained that when the light hit him it was like being “hit by a bucket of ice water.” At first it looked like it was about 4 or 5 inches in diameter, but then it gradually spread out to about 4 or 5 feet as it came upon him. He suddenly felt frozen and unable to move. He couldn't even blink his eyes. He was on the verge of running when he was “frozen” on the spot, his body and limbs in a leaning forward poise. He stated that he remained conscious throughout this experience, but was unable to gauge precisely how much time was elapsing.

Doyle then explained how strange thoughts began coming into his head, like mathematical equations that made no sense to him, along with seeing the omega symbol, as well as seeing a picture of himself looking over a hill into a red ocean with a green sky above and a blue ground below. “Something was putting these thoughts in my mind,” he added. He also had a vision of floating in space with stars of different colors, noting: “The colors were colors I've never seen before; they were all in-between colors in the spectrum.”

Then the beam of light extinguished and young Doyle fell forward flat on his face. Getting up off the ground, he could see that the object was still there, in the same position. After about a minute of getting to his feet, the buzzing sound grew louder. Then the object took a vertical position, tail down, and after about 4-5 seconds the tail light increased in brightness and then the object blurred, accompanied by a purple soundless flash, followed about 4-5 seconds by a sound like a loud thunderclap. He could make out the red light shooting straight up, then curving and leveling off, accompanied by another flash of light, this one white, with about the size and brightness of a first-magnitude star.

It was over. Doyle stumbled into his house, sat down trembling, and then laid down, still feeling very nervous. It was a little after 11 o'clock. His parents had been out and were not home yet. He admitted that he didn't call the police or anyone else. “No one would believe me,” he told Stringfield.

Stringfield regarded the witness as credible. He had an IQ of 172, looked and acted older than his age, liked sports, excelled in swimming, played football in high school, and was very conversant in scientific matters and the use of computers. Stringfield also knew of similar cases.



References:

Situation Red: The UFO Seige, by Leonard H. Stringfield; foreword by Major Donald E. Keyhoe. A Fawcett Crest Book, New York, 1977. ISBN: 0-449-23654-4.

My friends Charles and Geri Wilhelm of the former Ohio UFO Investigators League of Fairfield, Ohio, were the initial investigators to look into this intriguing case.


Thursday, March 28, 2024