An unusual ce-iii ufo report
(The following account will appear in the July/August 1988
issue of the International UFO Reporter, 2457 West Peterson
Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60659. Please contact CUFOS for
permission to make copies. Reproduction without permission is
strictly prohibited. Copyright (c) 1988 by the J. Allen Hynek
Center for UFO Studies.)
AN UNUSUAL CE-III UFO REPORT
FROM THE BANGOR NAVAL SUBMARINE BASE, BREMERTON, WASHINGTON
by
Donald A. Johnson, Ph.D.
P.O. Box 161
Kirkland, WA 98083-0161
DATE: August 31, 1987
TIME: 11:00 p.m. (PDT)
TYPE OF SIGHTING: CE-III
WITNESSES: Dennis Mauer, age 10
Randy Springsteen, age 8
Charlene Springsteen, age 26
LOCATION: U.S. Navy Trident Submarine Base
Bangor, Washington
I received a phone call from Bob Gribble of the UFO
Reporting Center on September 1st, 1987, saying that he had
received a report of a UFO sighting by two boys, ages 8 and 10,
who live in base housing with their families at the Bangor Naval
Submarine Base. I called the mother of one of the boys,
Charlene Springsteen, and she related the following account.
Her son Randy, age 8, and her neighbor's son Dennis Mauer,
age 10, were spending the night together and she allowed them to
go outside for a few minutes to play on the playground
equipment. This was at approximately 10:55 p.m. on Monday
evening, August 31st. The two boys were outdoors for about 10
minutes and came running back in, "as white as ghosts". The
boys reported that they had seen a big circular-shaped object
hovering 20-40 feet over her house, shine a beam of light down
on the house, then come directly over the boys on the playground
equipment, stop, and shine a larger beam of light down on them.
After a few minutes, during which they reported seeing two
cat-like humanoid figures aboard the craft, the object moved
away and the kids ran home. After hearing from the boys, the
mother went outside and saw an "aircraft" with many--"10 to
20"--red and blue lights arranged in a row in the Northwestern
sky. She knew that airplanes had red and green running lights
so concluded that the lighting arrangement was not that of an
airplane. She then saw the object make a quick turn and zip
away. She looked around the immediate neighborhood to see if
any of her neighbors also witnessed the event, but none of her
neighbors were out.
The boys reported that they saw an occupant--"some sort of
creature"-- through a door or opening in the bottom-middle of
the craft with big long, "cat-like" ears. It was standing up,
and they saw it bend over something that looked like a
searchlight and shine the light down on them by pulling a
lever. They saw a second occupant similar in appearance to the
first in a second doorway, in the bottom-lower left of the craft.
Mrs. Springsteen had the boys draw sketches of what they
had seen the following morning. Her husband is an enlisted man
in the Navy with the rank of E-6, and works with the base
security forces. She told me he was skeptical of the boys'
account and reluctant to have them report the sighting to any
officials.
Mrs. Springsteen called the Bremerton police to report the
sighting, and had a friend call the private security force, Pam
Am, that provides security for the base housing, on her behalf.
The Bremerton police, who incidentally would have been out of
their jurisdiction and so can't legally investigate in response
to a call from the Bangor base, suggested she call 911 if she
felt the incident warranted the attention, and the Pan Am base
security guard did not regard the UFO report as a serious matter.
I suggested that she probably should report the sighting to
the base commander, because the UFO was an unauthorized aerial
object in a restricted, Federal area. However, I emphasized
that it wasn't my intention to pressure her to do so, and I left
the decision up to her. She told me she would think about it
and meanwhile she would talk to Dennis's mother and have her
call me.
About half an hour later I received a phone call from Linda
Mauer, Dennis's mother. At first, Dennis did not tell his
mother about his encounter the night before because he wasn't
sure she would believe him. When she did learn about their
encounter from Charlene Springsteen, she had Dennis draw
sketches of what he had seen and the sketches were identical to
those drawn earlier. This convinced her that the boys were
reporting a real event and not making something up.
Mrs. Mauer also reported that she had had a previous UFO
sighting in New Mexico and was more willing to accept the boys'
account of the events because of it. Her previous sighting
occurred at her home at a time when they were living in the
desert, "30 miles from anything", and as she was hanging a
bedspread on the clothes line she noticed three bright, red
columns of light move through the sky.
I called Jim Clarkson in Aberdeen, a police officer and
MUFON field investigator, and asked him to check with police and
sheriff departments in the Bangor area to see if they had logged
any other UFO reports. He reported back that he had talked to
the Kitsap County Sheriff's Department and they had received no
reports.
I interviewed Mrs. Springsteen, Randy, Dennis Mauer, and
Linda Mauer in person on Sunday, September 6th. The base is a
high security restricted area not open to the public and a
visitor requires special permission from someone living on the
base to visit base housing (see the enclosed copy of my
visitor's pass). Base housing is south and about a quarter of a
mile away from the top security military installation where the
nuclear submarines are docked and nuclear missiles stockpiled.
I arrived at their home on F Court of Albacore Circle in the
early afternoon.
The immediate neighborhood consists of approximately 25
housing units, grouped into four or five-unit townhouses that
are approximately 25 feet apart (see sketch prepared by Linda
Mauer). The playground is shared by 50-60 families and the
swingset on which the boys were playing at the time of the UFO
encounter was estimated by Mrs. Springsteen to be 75 feet from
the Springsteen house. I later measured the distance and found
it to be 82 feet.
On the night of the encounter Dennis Mauer was staying
overnight at his friend Randy's house. This was the last week
of summer before school started and the boys were up late. In a
private conversation with one of the neighbors, I learned that
it is not uncommon for the children in the neighborhood to be
out playing very late at night. According to Dennis:
"I asked Sherri if we could go out in the backyard
and swing on the swings and she said "no" and we begged
her and begged her and she said yes. And we went out
there, and it just flew over this (the Springsteen) house
and then it went over the park."
The boys were sitting on the swings and trying to spook
each other by talking about Freddy, the demon-monster from the
movie "Nightmare on Elm Street". Neither one of the boys had
ever seen the movie, but it was common for the neighborhood
children to tell stories that "Freddy is going to get you". It
was at this point that they first noticed the "spaceship, with
red and blue lights going around it", coming in from due East at
a height of two stories above the rooftops. The object stopped
and hovered over the F-court townhouse, shown a beam of light
down on the house, then moved directly over the boys and shone
another, brighter beam down on them. When the object moved
towards them it moved oddly, with a jerking motion: move and
then stop, move and then stop.
When the boys first sighted the object, a few meters over
the house, Randy's mother was inside sewing at her sewing
machine, and she had the drapes in the dining room and kitchen
closed, with only one drape partially opened through which she
could keep an eye on the boys. The sewing machine was around a
bend in the wall that separates the dining room from the kitchen
and partially blocked her view of the window that looks out on
the playground, so this is why she believes she did not see the
light beam. Mrs. Springsteen reported that the boys described
the light as "telescoping". The light beamed on, beamed off,
and then a wider or brighter beam was shown on the boys. The
beam of light came from the bottom-center of the UFO. The
bright beam apparently had a levitating effect on the swings the
boys were sitting on, lifting them up towards the craft.
Although the object was reported to be quite low to the
ground--40 or so feet when it passed over the roof of the
house--it made no noise and there was no sand or wind blown up
as would occur from the downdraft of a helicopter. The boys
estimated the height of the object as two building heights above
them, which would be approximately 80 feet. They estimated the
object's diameter to be as wide as the sand filled area of the
playground, which I later measured to be 52 feet wide.
The object was described as having a round bottom with many
blue and red lights on the outside edge in alternating colors.
The lights were rotating or sequencing around the object,
possibly in a counter-clockwise direction. The boys only saw
the bottom of the object, and some type of peak or antenna
projecting from the top. The rest of the object was obscured
from their view by the angle at which the object presented
itself. Dennis's first sketch shows eight lighted,
square-shaped windows across the upper third of the bottom of
the object. However, Randy's sketch and Dennis's subsequent
sketches show five square-shaped windows. There were two
"doors" or openings, one in the center of the craft and one in
the lower left. In each doorway stood an occupant. The
creature standing at the center doorway was observed operating
the searchlight, which was directed on the two boys.
Dennis and Randy described the two entities as over six
feet tall ("taller than Randy's dad"), with over-sized heads and
thin, spindly bodies. They were covered with greenish fur and
wore no clothing that was visible. They were humanoid,
appearing to be bipedal. The creatures had unusually long
spindly arms, and bodies and legs that seem biologically
improbable, i.e. unable to support such large heads. Dennis'
described the size of the principal creature's torso as no
greater around in circumference than his thigh, which I judged
to be less than 6 inches in diameter.
Both creatures had large pointed, cat-like ears on an
oval-shaped head. The eyes were described as blueish-green and
round, with unusually long eyelashes. The mouth was wrinkled,
"like an old grandma's". The fingers and toes of the creature
in the central doorway were described by Dennis as unusually
long and had suction-cups on the tips. Dennis didn't recall the
word for suction-cups, and described them as "like the things on
the front of darts". Randy's drawing didn't have suction cups
but he went along with Dennis's assertion about them. Dennis,
whose description is more elaborate than Randy's, described the
feet as "frog feet" and felt that both the hands and feet were
webbed. Both boys drew sketches which showed a creature with
very big, pointed ears (estimated to be 12-14" long), eyes with
unusually long eye brows, a wrinkled mouth, and a skinny body.
Mrs. Springsteen reported that when she returned to the
house after going out and seeing the UFO depart, she noticed the
sliding glass door in her dining room was open and the wind was
blowing the curtains out through the door. She was certain she
didn't go out that way and doesn't recall anyone else opening
the door. She regarded it as somewhat odd and possibly
connected to the incident. In fact, the more she thought about
it the more she became frightened that someone or something
might be in the house, and got down her husband's rifle for
protection and sat with it until he came home from work.
The next door neighbor, residing at F-17 Albacore Circle,
saw a bright white, stationary light in the eastern sky at
sometime after 10:30 p.m. that same night from her bedroom
window, and she thought she may have seen the UFO before it
approached the boys on the playground. However, a check of star
and planet guides revealed that the woman most probably had
watched the planet Jupiter, which was in the Eastern sky in
approximately the right place to be mistaken for an unusual
light.
Both boys related their stories with some excitement in
their voices but in an otherwise matter-of-fact manner. They
tended to lose interest towards the end of my interview with
their mothers, and asked to be excused so that they could go out
and play. It is my belief that they were not lying or
concocting the story, but were trying to relate as best they
could some unusual event which they believed had happened to
them.
While reasonably certain that the boys were not making up
the story, I am not certain to what degree the facts of the case
are exagerated or distorted. We need to keep in mind that the
boys were in a receptive state of mind to have a spooky or
bizarre event occur, because they had just been trying to "psych
each other out" with tales of "Freddy". It's undeniable that
the creatures they described were unbelievably strange, even
goblin-like in their appearance, like storybook characters. The
link between saying "Freddy is going to get you" and seeing
these frightening creatures has to be listed as more than a
coincidence.
Furthermore, it is difficult though not impossible to
believe that a UFO could penetrate an extremely sensitive
military installation and not be detected. If the incident had
gone on for much longer it would certainly have stretched the
bounds of believability to have it go unnoticed and not be
responded to by security personnel. The fact that the encounter
was relatively brief in duration tends to lend some credence to
the possibility that some type of physical object could manuever
in at tree-top level and then depart so quickly that it could
evade detection.
The lack of any noise or downdraft makes a military
helicopter explanation unlikely. The multiple red and blue
lights that Mrs. Springsteen observed would also make a
helicopter or conventional aircraft explanation unlikely. An
advertising plane might seem at first to be a good candidate for
the boys' sighting, but there are no ad plane companies still in
business in the area, and besides, they have no business flying
around in military restricted airspace. The biggest argument
against an aircraft misidentification is that no civilian
aircraft are allowed anywhere near the area. The Trident
submarine base had been the site of numerous anti-nuclear
demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience in the early
1980's, and the Navy security forces get very touchy if anyone
flies anywhere close to the base, let alone buzzes it at an
altitude less than 100 feet.
The fathers of the two boys, both Navy security personnel,
joked about how seriously their wives were taking the boys'
accounts, but didn't dispute their stories or offer any
explanations, other than suggesting somewhat facetiously that it
may have been the Russians. That seems an extremely unlikely
explanation, given the severe diplomatic repercussions that
would result should they get caught. The families decided not
to report the sighting to anyone in authority at the base, and
to this day I don't believe the Base Commander knows anything
about it. It remains a perplexing story, open to either an
unusual psychological explanation, or interpretation as a truely
anomalistic aerial phenomenon.
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