News Reporter Threatened and UFO Photographs Stolen - The Wytheville UFO Flap, 1987.

**karl 12** · 05-03-2012, 05:09 AM

Following a wave of UFO sightings involving police officers from Wytheville, Virginia in 1987, radio news reporter Danny Gordon describes below how calls flooded into his radio station from other witnesses in the area and the harrasment he experienced after attempting to investigate the sightings, he also claims a series of negatives were stolen from his home after he managed to photograph the objects. The TV series 'Unsolved Mysteries' made a good report about the case featuring a pretty remarkable interview and there's also just been a trailer released for an upcoming UFO documentary called 'Strange Country'.

Incident / Interview:

Unsolved Mysteries:

25 Years Later:

In 1987, in the community of Wytheville, Virginia, a series of UFO encounters would occur. The first sighting to be reported was made by three policeman.
On October 7, 1987, WYVE radio station news reporter Danny Gordon received a telephone call from the local Sheriff. This was a routine call that Gordon received to gather news each day.
However, this report was not your run-of-the-mill call. Gordon was shocked at what he was told - three Wythe County Sheriff deputies, all former military, had seen a UFO.
A report such as this was normally relegated to the end of Gordon's news cast, as a tongue-in-cheek report. This was the case with the UFO report, but it would not remain humorous long.
Almost immediately after the broadcast, telephone switchboards were overloaded with UFO reports. Obviously, the three deputies were not the only witnesses to UFOs.
On October 19, Gordon set up a call-in show for the UFO reports. Though the reports came in, Gordon felt that there must be a reasonable explanation. He made numerous calls to the military, but was assured that nothing from the military would explain the reports..

link

Harassment:

News Reporter Threatened and UFO Photographs Stolen - The Wytheville UFO Flap, 1987.-xj4f9213a6.jpg

WYVE News Director and UFO witness Danny Gordon. Received countless late night phone calls, some of them threatening. His house was broken into, bogus reporters had visited his home, finally his UFO negatives from the photographs he took had disappeared

UFO Witness Harassment

Photographs:

News Reporter Threatened and UFO Photographs Stolen - The Wytheville UFO Flap, 1987.-xn4f923868.jpg

On October 21, Danny and a friend, Roger Hall, drove to the area south of Wytheville, where most of the sightings were reported, but they were unable to see anything, but while they were driving back, Danny looked to his left and saw an unusual object on the horizon.

They parked and got out of the car and noticed the large craft flying by, that was dome-shaped and had a strobe light on top. Danny then saw a red ball that went towards the craft, and docked with it and the craft flew up in the sky. The two were shocked, but angered that they were unable to get any pictures of it. The next night, Danny and Roger went out to take pictures of the craft, and this time they were able to. A press conference was made for the next day, October 23, but the night before, Danny received an anonymous phone call and the person claimed that the CIA and federal government were interested in the UFO sightings. Other phone calls Danny received told him not to investigate the sightings because they had to do with the government..

Then, after the press conference, Danny returned home to find that his house had been broken into. Oddly, nothing was stolen, and Danny believes that somebody had broken into his home to take the UFO pictures.

Six weeks later, on December 2, Danny, his wife, and daughter were leaving the local mall when people began screaming and Danny saw a large object that broke into four smaller objects in the sky. When Danny took pictures of the objects, they disappeared from view. The pictures of the objects surprisingly showed that they changed their form several times, from teardrop shaped to round ball shaped, and then disc shape, and finally egg shape when they went out of sight. By the end of December, the UFO sightings had reached over 1,500 in the town of Wytheville. Patricia Akers claimed that she had 10 sightings from an area a few miles north of Wytheville, that she believed were of strange objects that looked like helicopters or airplanes but made no noise. Rita Marie Vaught claimed that she saw a UFO behind a ridge half a mile from her house, that she said was circle object in the sky with strange lights. Mary Jane Williamson had several sightings from her house in the center of Wytheville. She said the UFO was a large object with several lights around it and a red light in the middle. Danny later called the Pentagon and talked to the defense branch, and they claimed that the government confirms that UFOs exist, but that they do not pose a threat to Wythe County..

Full story

Links:

Wytheville UFO's 25 Years Later
Strange Country: A Different Type of UFO Documentary

**mikekle** · 05-03-2012, 08:37 AM

It clearly says there that when he contacted the pentagon, they told him UFOs do exist but pose no threat to the city, so whats the problem? we have the pentagon confirming UFOs!!!! Im sure he has this call documented and who he spoke to. This is very interesting and really proves there is something going on and govt knows all about it!!

**bill.zen** · 05-03-2012, 08:57 AM

Originally Posted by mikekle

It clearly says there that when he contacted the pentagon, they told him UFOs do exist but pose no threat to the city, so whats the problem? we have the pentagon confirming UFOs!!!! Im sure he has this call documented and who he spoke to. This is very interesting and really proves there is something going on and govt knows all about it!!

UFO simply means 'Unidentified Flying Object', it doesn't automatically mean little green men in a saucer.

So even if they did say they exist, it's still not confirmation of extraterrestrial life.

**tosheus** · 05-03-2012, 09:56 AM

very interesting... One to look out for. Thanks Karl....

**tosheus** · 05-03-2012, 10:04 AM

Originally Posted by mikekle

It clearly says there that when he contacted the pentagon, they told him UFOs do exist but pose no threat to the city, so whats the problem? we have the pentagon confirming UFOs!!!! Im sure he has this call documented and who he spoke to. This is very interesting and really proves there is something going on and govt knows all about it!!

Agree. That confirmation within the phone call is very intriguing.. Completely transparent but very intriguing.

**Coroner** · 05-03-2012, 10:48 AM

But at the end of the day - the government could fly you around the world in one - take you to visit other planets and visit aliens , and bring you home and say - if you tell anyone your dead

I'm sure everyone would shut the hell up, so if your stepping on toes down here - shut up or your dead - or something just as bad

This is why nothing good will ever come forward - if you want to live, and if you don't you will be made out to be a disillusioned fool anyway

***SOUL-DRIFTER*** · 05-03-2012, 11:36 AM

Reports about newsmen being threatened is not new. It goes back before Roswell.
Some newsmens themselves have openly talked about it.

But then there are those that say... nahh, that does not happen.

**mikekle** · 05-03-2012, 09:00 PM

Originally Posted by Coroner

But at the end of the day - the government could fly you around the world in one - take you to visit other planets and visit aliens , and bring you home and say - if you tell anyone your dead

I'm sure everyone would shut the hell up, so if your stepping on toes down here - shut up or your dead - or something just as bad

This is why nothing good will ever come forward - if you want to live, and if you don't you will be made out to be a disillusioned fool anyway

I would not shut up. In fact I would get the proof out there so fast their heads would spin, and id also do it before they could get to me. If I truly had proof, I wouldnt be scared at all.

**karl 12** · 05-04-2012, 07:32 AM

Thanks for the replies and considering there were 'thousands' of individual witness reports, it's quite surprising the Wytheville UFO sightings aren't that well known about (I'd never heard of them anyway) - there's a good article below featuring some other witness testimony and it also counters the 'refueling B52 bomber' debunk.

“It is a compelling case because there were hundreds, if not thousands, of individual witnesses and a variety of craft over the course of several months,” said Valluzzo.

“The witnesses were reliable people,” he added. “In fact, the National Enquirer sent a reporter who decided not to run a story because the people were just not weird enough!”

Kotz said that the reigning opinion is that it was some kind of classified military project, but there are some details that just don’t match up.

“First of all, why Wytheville? If you are trying to hide something, the intersection of two major highways is not a good place to do it,” Kotz said. “Secondly, the B2 bomber and refueling exercise explanations don’t fit the facts. The majority of the unexplained reports feature noiseless, hovering, low-level craft.”

Wytheville focus of UFO documentary

There's also this newspaper report from the Free Lance-Star which mentions harassment of local motorists in the area by low flying machines:

Convery also came up with an explanation for the alleged harassment of local motorists by the flying machines which are said to have followed people with spotlights on them and even run drivers off the road.
"Imagine you're a bored fighter jock" Convery said. "To relieve the tedium, you chase a local around."

Newspaper Article

Cheers.

**karl 12** · 05-04-2012, 07:58 AM

Originally Posted by bill.zen

UFO simply means 'Unidentified Flying Object', it doesn't automatically mean little green men in a saucer..

Thanks for the reply Bill and you makes a fair point there -here's one of the best UFO definitions I've come across although when it comes to cases like the Portage County incident, the Edwards Air Force base incident, the Tehran incident, the Coyne incident, the Bariloche incident, the Colares case, the Minot AFB incident, the Shag Harbour incident etc.. it realy does make a person wonder just what the hell these objects actualy are.

"UFO - the reported perception of an object or light seen in the sky or upon the land the appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic and luminescent behavior of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original percipients but remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common sense identification, if one is possible."

The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry by J. Allen Hynek, 1972, p. 10

Dr Hynek also made this pretty relevant comment in his address to the United Nations UFO Hearings on November 27, 1978:

Mr. Chairman, there exists today a world-wide phenomenon... indeed if it were not world-wide I should not be addressing you and these representatives from many parts of the world. There exists a global phenomenon the scope and extent of which is not generally recognized. It is a phenomenon so strange and foreign to our daily terrestrial mode of thought that it is frequently met by ridicule and derision by persons and organizations unacquainted with the facts..

I refer, of course, to the phenomenon of UFOs... Unidentified Flying Objects... which I should like to define here simply as "any aerial or surface sighting, or instrumental recording (e.g., radar, photography, etc.) which remains unexplained by conventional methods even after competent examination by qualified persons."

You will note, Mr. Chairman, that this definition says nothing about little green men from outer space, or manifestations from spiritual realms, or various psychic manifestations. It simply states an operational definition. A cardinal mistake, and a source of great confusion, has been the almost universal substitution of an interpretation of the UFO phenomenon for the phenomenon itself.

This is akin to having ascribed the Aurora Borealis to angelic communication before we understood the physics of the solar wind.

Nonetheless, in the popular mind the UFO phenomenon is associated with the concept of extra-terrestrial intelligence and this might yet prove to be correct in some context.

Cheers.