[CNI News thanks Matthew Smith for alerting us to this story.]
A man and woman living on a ranch east of Tucson, Arizona, told CNI News that they observed several bizarre aerial objects on the night of Tuesday, November 25, 1997. In separate phone interviews, Lesley Beare and her housemate David described a series of incidents that began in mid-evening and lasted until past midnight.
David, who calls himself a complete skeptic regarding UFOs, told CNI News editor Michael Lindemann that he and Lesley were returning from a short trip to a nearby convenience store when they observed several lights moving in the sky above their ranch. At first, he assumed the lights belonged to some kind of "test aircraft," because unusual aircraft often fly out of nearby Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, south of Tucson. However, at Lesley's urging, he observed the lights through binoculars.
"I've never seen a plane like this," he said. "It didn't have legal [aircraft] lights. It was very bright and dashing about." Despite the oddness of the sighting, David went inside to read a book. "I didn't want to deal with it," he said. "I had my denial going." But Lesley stayed outside. At least one other woman, a neighbor, also watched the moving lights.
"It was like two spheres, circular, and playing, going up and down and sideways and together," Lesley said. The sighting so captivated her that she forgot about the ice cream they had just purchased at the store. It was found melting in the car the next morning.
But this was just the beginning. After watching the lights for about half an hour, Lesley went inside with David and her two children. Some time later, her dogs started barking. She let them out the front door.
"I went out the front door, and there were these three shapes in the sky that were all different colors," Lesley said. "One was like a square with a triangle in it, one was like two spheres, and one was like two boxes with what appeared to be some kind of bridge or light that attached them together. So I went in and got David and my two kids and had them look at it. We were watching them dance in the sky."
Asked to estimate size and distance of the objects, Lesley said that they appeared to be "in front of" a mountain range about two miles away, to the east. She estimated that the objects looked bigger than a helicopter would look at the same distance. The objects made no noise, she said.
Although the moving lights looked beautiful, Lesley said she became concerned because her animals were obviously agitated. "My dogs were barking constantly and acting weird. The horses were very upset. The goats were hiding under their little house." Lesley said her animals had never acted that way as long as she had been on that ranch. It was then that she decided to call Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
"I asked David-Monthan, 'Are you doing something in the sky? Because my animals are going crazy, and I'll go down and tranquilize them if you're doing something that's upsetting them.' And they basically said, 'That's classified information,' and hung up," Lesley told CNI News.
"Whatever happened [that] night was not usual. It wasn't right," David said. "We called Davis-Monthan to report it, and they told us it was classified and none of our business."
Lesley then decided to call local news media to see if anyone had reported similar sightings, but no one had. Then she called 911. To her surprise, the 911 operator gave her the phone number of a "UFO place" in Florida. (Lesley told CNI News that the phone number had a 407 area code, in the Orlando, Florida area; but she did not remember the full number.)
"I called that number, and the guy told me to go in the house and don't mess with this, because this could be serious," Lesley said.
By this time, there was more activity in the sky. Two or three planes appeared to come toward their location from Davis-Monthan. Though David could not confirm that they were military jets, he felt sure they were not commercial planes. He said the strange aerial objects disappeared as the planes approached, but returned when the planes left the area.
"It was real obvious, after I made the report, that Davis-Monthan was getting interested. We never have planes like that around our house," Lesley said.
"Davis-Monthan wanted to know where [the objects] were," David added.
Later that evening, Lesley took a high-powered flashlight and flashed it toward the sky. "The box-shaped one was starting to go away, so I had this big mag-light, and as I flickered the light, this thing came toward me," she said. "It scared the hell out of me and my kids."
"It was hovering in one spot, and then it started coming toward us," David said. "I told her, 'Don't do that! Come in the house!'"
They all ran inside. That was the last they saw of the objects. They did not go back outside until the next morning. But the strangeness was not over.
"This is the weirdest thing," Lesley told CNI News. "My kids were terrified. They're nine and twelve years old. So I put them to bed, and then David and I went to bed. And as we were going to sleep, he said, 'One of the boys is in here. Look at the bottom of the bed.' As I looked up, I saw what appeared to be a figure of some kind, and then it was gone. So I ran into my kids' room, because I thought they were playing some kind of game with me. But they were sound asleep."
Lesley and David say they don't know who, or what, was in their room that night.
--------------
Lesley Beare, 11341 E. Escalante, Tucson, AZ 85730
520-722-2739, 885-6552
Original file name: CNI - Tucson UFO sighting.final
This file was converted with TextToHTML - (c) Logic n.v.