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But no officials made inquiries about something here that happened in between these two other reported events, even though our own UFOs were witnessed by thousands of American citizens. No official documents have been filed about the Hudson Valley events—at least as far as we know. Yet its resemblance to the Belgian wave was notable. Beginning in December 1982, the American wave also lasted many years, with its peak occurring within a two-year period, and it, too, involved repeated visits by large silent objects, sometimes more than one at a time, hovering at low altitudes with extremely bright spotlights. Groups of people watched, often at close range or while standing directly underneath, and some reported seeing a dark, solid structure behind the lights. Many, while driving along the Taconic Parkway or meandering alone down curving backcountry roads, pulled over to get a better look at the UFOs, while others saw the objects when walking their dogs or jogging along reservoirs and lakes. Witnesses said these structures appeared to be as huge as football fields and were capable of shooting off at incredible speeds from stationary positions. As is typical for UFOs, they were silent or emitted a low humming sound. The Hudson Valley UFOs, like those in Belgium, did not exhibit any aggressive or hostile behavior. In fact, in similar fashion, the less intimidated witnesses reported flashing their car lights at the objects and receiving flashes in return. And this wave, too, featured simultaneous sightings by police officers—in Danbury, Connecticut, police initially joked about calls from witnesses, before being rudely awakened, which was exactly how the Belgian police initially responded. Later, twelve officers from this department alone had their own sightings [I]. Pathways could be determined due to the volume of reports from varying locations within short time periods, and route maps were constructed just as they would later be in Belgium. Similarly, some nighttime photos and videos were taken in New York and analyzed by various laboratories, although not as extensively, nor were the images as powerful, as the Petit-Rechain nanan Although the Hudson Valley residents reported mainly delta- or V- shaped objects and the Belgians saw mostly triangular ones, in reading the many witness accounts of both events, the similar behaviors of the crafts are striking. The bizarre and highly unusual "red light ball" phenomenon reported by the four Belgian policemen made an appearance in upstate New York as well. During the first, dramatic night of the Belgian wave in 1989, two pairs of policemen in different locations watched the red light ball shoot out on a beam from a hovering craft, which was then drawn back into the UFO—a rare detail observed at very close range. Heinrich Nicoll, one of the policemen who witnessed this spectacle, interpreted it to be a probe of some sort. In an interview, he said, "The ball kept leaving and coming back, as if the ball were trying to measure something." [2] During the Hudson Valley wave, David Athens, chief of the New Fairfield Fire photo of 1990.