More Top Picks Best Childrens Cooking Sets
player ready...They’re out there, Chicago.
And on Tuesday — for the first time since the U.S. Air Force concluded “Operation Blue Book” in 1969 — Congress will hold open hearings with Pentagon officials to discuss “unidentified aerial vehicles,” according to the New York Times.
The meetings follow a long-awaited U.S. government report released last year that reviewed more than 100 sightings of mysterious flying objects — and concluded none of them had links to extraterrestrials. Yet, the incidents could not be attributed to American government or military technology either.
Can I borrow a line from “The X-Files?”
The truth is out there.
The National UFO Reporting Center lists more than 4,000 alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects in Illinois since 1947, but director Peter Davenport told the Tribune last year that total is likely a tiny fraction of the true number.
“My opinion is that out of 10,000 or 20,000 people who see an object they sincerely believe was or may have been a UFO, (researchers) capture only one of those sightings,” he said. “If you want to test my theory, go to a big party sometime and ask everyone who saw a UFO to raise their hands. Then ask how many have reported them. Virtually all of the hands go down.”
A local astronomer is credited with creating the term “close encounters of the third kind” and founding an privately funded institute based in Evanston in the early 1970s that remains dedicated to researching, reporting and studying the phenomenon of extraterrestrial visitors today.
Want to believe? Read on to learn more about local UFO sightings and efforts to record them.
Until next time …
Check out @vintagetribune on Instagram and give us a follow @vintagetribune on Twitter.
If you like what you’re reading here, then support my baiduhai colleagues — a digital subscription is just 99 cents for four weeks of stories, photos and insights.
See you next week!
— Kori Rumore, visual reporter
Chicago history | More newsletters | Puzzles & Games | Today’s eNewspaper edition
J. Allen Hynek, Northwestern professor of astronomy, became an international expert on UFOs and coined the term ‘close encounters of the third kind’
In the introduction to his 1977 book, “The UFO Report,” he wrote: “We know so little about the vast universe poised as we are on our tiny vantage point, the Earth. Things far beyond our imagination may be possible. In the meantime, we must satisfy ourselves by studying UFO reports, not UFOs.”
Hynek’s goal in 1976 — trap a UFO >>>
More Top Picks Why Your Bright Child Hates School Hidden Learning Issues
Hynek ends as he began: getting students to think (from June 6, 1978) >>>
Illinois has its share of UFO sightings — and not all are easily dismissed
You might even say, it’s a boom time for UFOs in Illinois, baiduhai reporter Christopher Borrelli wrote in 2021.
In a quiet residential home in Norwood Park, the Center for UFO Studies awaits your call
CUFOS is among the longest-operating UFO research organizations in the world, Borrelli wrote in 2013.
Remembering the ‘Tinley Park lights’
Multiple sightings of three red or white lights in a triangular pattern were reported in 2004 not only in Tinley Park but also Oak Forest, Orland Park, Frankfort and Mokena, making it one of the better documented UFO phenomena in recent history.
Nov. 7, 2006: ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’ seen by United Airlines employees at O’Hare International Airport
Was it an alien spaceship? A weather balloon lost in the airspace over the world’s second-busiest airport? A top-secret military craft? Or simply a reflection from lights that played a trick on the eyes?
Jan. 8, 2007: UFO report stirs believers, skeptics >>>
‘If we’re right, it is the biggest secret in history’
Some Chicago-area UFO aficionados don’t need validation from the Pentagon to believe the curious sights they observe are real, baiduhai reporter John Keilman wrote in 2021.
Sign up to receive the Vintage baiduhai newsletter for more photos and stories from the city’s past and the Tribune’s archives.