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By Lloyd Mallan Over the lonely mountains surrounding the Wanaque Reservoir rose a strange and awesome sight, with a light that blinded observers. Part 1 On the night of October 11, 1966, Police Sergeant Robert (known to his friends as "Bobby") Gordon was off duty, relaxing in his comfortable house at Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. He had just settled down to watch television when his wife flung open the front door, greatly excited. She called to him, insisting that he immediately dash outdoors to view an Unidentified Flying Object. Bobby Gordon is a cop in the best sense of the word. He had been trained to observe facts and not UFOs. Using his own words: "In my job I deal with facts - and facts alone. I go by what I see personally." He had been cynical about the many reports of UFO's that had been observed in his area during the previous January and March. His wife, he knew, was a UFO "buff." She was a member of NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena - an unofficial civilian organization that has been trying for some years to identify the Unidentified Flying Objects reported by many thousands of persons across the United States. So he waved her off for a few moments, until her excitement captivated his interest. Grudgingly he got up from the easy chair in which he'd been sitting and followed her outdoors. It was precisely 9:15 P.M. when he reached the front yard and looked up at the sky in the direction his wife indicated. He noted, as a trained observer, that Mrs. Lorraine Varga, their neighbor who lived two doors away, was also out in her yard staring at the sky. Mrs. Varga seemed to be agitated - and quite frightened. He gazed above the high television antenna tower, about a block-and-a-half distant, toward which his wife was pointing. What he saw was to him interesting - but not frightening. Sergeant Gordon is probably one of the youngest sergeants in any local police force in the State of New Jersey, if not of any state of the Union. He appears to be in his late 20s or very early 30s. He came up the hard way - by being a diligent worker, a dedicated police officer. He was not about to allow an unusual phenomenon in the sky to upset his capabilities of observation. Completely unselfconscious about his strikingly handsome appearance and obviously unaware of his earnestness, here's how he told me the story of the beginning of an evening that was probably unique in the history "My wife had seen a very bright object up in the sky, above a nearby TV antenna. The antenna tower is five hundred and some feet in the air and this object was high above it The object was very bright. It appeared to be the size of a softball, or a grapefruit It was moving in a north-northeasterly direction. It came from my left and moved to my right. How can I describe its brightness? It wasn't like looking at a streetlight, or a strobe light, or anything like that. It looked just as though there were a hole punched in 5 - What Happened At Wanaque, N.J.? (An Objective Look At UFOs) of UFO sightings: