The Official Guide to UFOs-pages

Page 88 of 161

Page 88 of 161
The Official Guide to UFOs-pages

Page Content (OCR)

"Well, he was dumbfounded, just like I was. We just didn't know what we were watching. We still don't know. You often see lights in the sky here. But you can see at once that it's a plane with big landing lights turned on. This was altogether different. There's no comparison with this thing and airplane landing lights." knows." Police Chief John Casazza has been with Reservoir Force for 36 years. He had seen many strange things happen, both on the ground and in the sky. But in his recollection, no one experience startled and mystified him as much as the funnel-shaped light he saw hanging over the frozen reservoir about two hours after Mayor Harry T. Wolfe observed an "unspectacular" light low on the horizon in the same general region of Wanaque Borough. The Mayor's UFO sighting had been made from the very top of the reservoir, which is about 60 feet high above Ringwood Avenue. Young John de Giacomo, mentioned in Part II of this story as an electrical engineering student "fooling around" with a Geiger counter in the town of Ringwood, has also seen some strange flying objects over the Wanaque Reservoir. His first sighting - there were two separate sight-ings - occurred less than a week after Reservoir Police Sergeant Ben Thompson had been "shaken up" at the sight of the strangest UFO of all (see Wanaque/I). But let John tell his own story: "I was with my friend Bob Dexter. This was on the Saturday after we had taken those radiation readings at tie north end of Ringwood and discovered that four-times increase in radiation level. It was October 15th (Sergeant Thompson had sighted his UFO on October 11th). And we were walking along disappeared - maybe another half hour or so." "What was the name of the officer who accompanied you?" I asked Chief Casazza. "Lieutenant George Vestito." "What was his reaction to the object, or the light?" "So you would recognize airplane landing lights - from any angle?" "Oh, yes. There's no question about it. They could be easily recognized." "Have you even a faint idea of what it was that you saw?" The Chief looked me straight in the eye. "We know we saw something. But what it was, God only "And you wouldn't even make a guess at it?" I asked, hoping for some hint. "IT wouldn't attempt to guess. I just don't know."