Night Siege: The Hudson Valley Ufo Sightings [Libro de bolsillo]

Despite its ominous title, 'Night Siege: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings' by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Philip J. Imbrogno, and Bob Pratt is a sensible, sober book on the subject of unexplained aerial phenomena.

Witnesses to the events and active participants in the investigation during the period described, the authors have limited the book to examining the dramatic 13-year UFO wave that took place over the Hudson River Valley from 1982 through 1995. During that period, the UFOs were seen by an estimated 7,000 people and reported to authorities by at least a tenth of that number.

The "boomerang-shaped," brightly-lit UFOs behaved like brazen tricksters and interactive provocateurs during their reign of the night skies.

Most often described as "bigger than a football field," the silent objects flew less that 500 feet above heavily populated commercial and residential areas, stopped traffic on freeways, turned sideways and spiraled through the air like Ferris wheels, dived into and flew out of bodies of water, hovered over single homes and cars for minutes on end, responded to lights flashed in their direction with dramatic light displays of their own, and disappeared over the horizon in bursts of unbelievable acceleration.

Several witnesses reported that the objects dematerialized--or "vanished"--right before their eyes.

On the night of July 24th 1990, an enormous, apparently nonchalant UFO hovered over the Indian Point Nuclear Reactor Complex and came within thirty feet of the only reactor in operation.

Awestruck plant personnel had the object on camera for more than fifteen minutes, and were given tentative orders to shoot it down.

Helpless police officers confronted the UFOs and repeatedly explained to panicked callers that they did not know what the objects were. The FAA reported that witnesses were seeing nothing more than small lightweight planes flying together in formation, an explanation few accepted. The national media ignored the sightings year after year.

However, identically-described objects were reported in the area as early as the mid-Fifties, and have been reported in subsequent decades from countries all over the world.

Commonly known today as "black triangles," a number of theorists--experts and amateurs alike--believe the triangles are the product of United States "black operations" military programs. The most common theory is that the objects are enormous "solid dirigibles," or "stealth blimps," that function as transportation systems for large numbers of soldiers and masses of heavy equipment.

Were the Hudson Valley UFOs secret advanced-model solid dirigibles? If so, why did they repeatedly fly over areas where they would inevitably be seen by a great number of affluent, educated people?

What practical purpose could their colorful, complex light patterns have had? If the objects were created to carry government troops, why has no soldier come forward to discuss his or her experience on such a vessel?

If the United States has access to such incredibly advanced technology, why weren't these ships utilized in recent wars? Why are the United State's space shuttles still built with comparatively rudimentary and unreliable technology?

Though the presented evidence often seems highly credible, it is difficult to accept that the United States government, as it is generally understood to exist, can presently create and control objects like those reported here.

Nor is there any sound reason to believe that the Hudson Valley UFOs were extraterrestrial craft.

Interpreted imaginatively, the objects seem like nothing so much as highly advanced, unmanned investigatory probes or other scientific tools--immense to us but tiny, perhaps even microscopic, to their creators--from some greater plane of reality that were intermittently thrust into mankind's perception, and then removed from it with equal ease.

Like objective correlatives to the allegory of Plato's Cave, the objects seemed like tangible, mocking proof that the universe is a much stranger place than mankind, with its dogmatic "consensus reality," wants to accept. This is true regardless of the genuine facts concerning their nature and origin.

The authors remain admirably restrained and objective throughout, hesitantly putting forth ideas but drawing no conclusions (except for one unfortunate slip in Chapter 16 when the UFOs are described as "something [that is] not of this Earth"). A number of witnesses of the phenomena--including police officers--are quoted at length. Reports of alien abduction phenomena, what some witnesses called "telepathic communication" with the object, and CE-IIIs ('close encounters of the third kind') are noted but left purposefully undiscussed.

As Jung concluded in his "Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies," "Something is seen, but what?"

This book was, I believe, Hynek's last, and was primarilly written by Phil Imbrogno. It is a good read, frequently backed up with eyewitness testimony and impressions. Several incidents are covered, leaving little doubt that people in the Hudson Valley saw SOMETHING, but what? The flying triangles have since been seen in other areas, and skeptics still point to government "explanations" which seem to leave as much unexplained as the initial reports themselves.

Readers familiar with the recent "Stealth Blimp" sightings in Illinois, the triangles over Belgium, or the Phoenix lights will spot similarities. There are also apparently sincere witnesses who completely disagree with each other-sometimes over the same sighting-as to what has been seen.

This is the second, and updated, edition of a book describing a remarkable series of UFO sightings in and around the Hudson Valley, mainly involving places in southern New York State and Connecticut, such as Bedford, Brewster, Carmel, Danbury and Fairfield. They began at the end of 1982. UFO hotspots are often in relatively remote areas, but the Hudson Valley is populous, and within commuting distance of New York City. References to 'New York' in what follows refer to New York State, not New York City.

J. Allen Hynek was a professor emeritus and chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern University in Illinois. It was he who introduced the well-known UFO classification scheme that includes Close Encounters of the First, Second and Third Kinds. Since he died in 1986, he obviously didn't participate fully in the writing of the second edition of the book, which refers to 7,046 UFO sighting reports between 1982 and 1995. Philip Imbrogno, was (and perhaps still is) a science teacher. He was the principal investigator of the Hudson Valley phenomena. Although he's nominally the second author of Night Siege, it seems that he may have actually been its main author. Nevertheless, I'll refer to the authors as 'Hynek et al.', given that Hynek is formally listed as the first author. The third author, journalist Bob Pratt, died in 2005.

In relation to the investigations, there are references in the book to 'we' and 'us'. I wonder whether these should be understood in fairly general terms. It may be that Imbrogno worked with various investigators, and that Hynek and Pratt weren't always present. Therefore, in what follows, references to 'the investigators' may not necessarily relate specifically to Imbrogno, Hynek and Pratt, although I imagine that Imbrogno was involved in most, if not all, of the investigative work.

As noted, 'Night Siege' refers to 7,046 UFO sighting reports. This figure no doubt refers to individual witness reports, not separate incidents, although there do appear to have been a large number of the latter (but presumably nowhere near 7,046). Chapter 17 of the book includes a number of interesting charts, giving statistical data about the sightings. They indicate, for example, that a large majority of the sightings involved a boomerang-, triangle-, or V-shaped object, which was mostly judged to be at least 100 feet across.

The following examples give some flavour of what was reportedly experienced.

Shortly before midnight on 31st December 1982, Tony Vallor (pseudonym) saw a group of very bright lights to the south of his home in Kent, New York - some red, some green, and some white. He called to his wife to bring their movie camera. By the time she emerged from the house, the lights were almost directly over it. To Vallor, they appeared to be connected to some sort of structure, with a boomerang- or V-shape. He was aware of a faint, deep hum, and a deep vibrating sensation in his chest. The object was maybe 500 feet above them. When he began filming, the coloured lights immediately disappeared and were replaced by three bright white lights. After what may have been five seconds, the white lights went out and the coloured ones reappeared. The object passed slowly overhead, towards Interstate 84. The investigators saw Vallor's film, but the lights didn't show up well, and no structure was visible.

A 55 year-old warehouse foreman called Edwin Hansen also reported having seen the object, apparently just after the Vallors had seen it. He was driving home on Interstate 84 at the time. The UFO was projecting a beam of light to the ground, but Hansen heard no noise from the craft. He thought to himself that he would like it to come closer and give him a better look. Immediately, it began to descend and head towards his car, its 'searchlight' now switched off. He became apprehensive and frantically blew his horn, vainly hoping to scare it away. He raised his hands to shield his eyes from the light, which was intense. The object again projected down a beam of white light, which fell on the road ahead and then moved towards Hansen's car. Thoroughly frightened, he pleaded for the object to go away. He reportedly felt "thoughts that weren't [his] own, but a kind of voice telling [him] not to be afraid." (Such comments were apparently heard a number of times in relation to the sightings.) The object suddenly turned away, and the beam of light disappeared.

UFOs have a habit of turning up over 'sensitive' locations, and this was apparently the case in the Hudson Valley area, since witnesses testified to sightings involving the Indian Point nuclear reactor complex at Buchanan, New York, on 14th June and 24th July 1984 (discussed in Chapter 11 of the book). Regarding the second sighting, one of the witnesses said that the object was about the size of three football fields.

In addition to the many reports of straightforward UFO sightings, the investigators were told of other strange experiences, which may have been linked with the UFO phenomena. For example, on pp. 181-182, Hynek et al. describe an incident reported by a woman called Ellen. She was awoken one night in April 1983 by a male voice, which frightened her. Her husband was beside her, but she was unable to wake him. The mysterious voice, which was getting louder, seemed to be speaking gibberish, but then - clearly and loudly - it said, "Do not be afraid. We will not harm you." It seemed to be coming from a radio in the room, but Ellen knew that the device was switched off. Then she saw flashes of multicoloured lights through the skylight above the bed, and she heard a low humming sound, as if something were just above the house. She tried to get out of bed, but there appeared to be an invisible weight on her legs. A beam of white light suddenly came through the skylight, engulfing her and her sleeping husband. Her next recollection was of waking up at 8 a.m. The couple got up, feeling as if they'd been awake all night, and they were uneasy and irritable for the rest of the morning. When Ellen eventually told her husband what she'd experienced, he said that he'd dreamt about seeing a UFO and a beam of light, and of being taken on board. However, he was apparently unwilling to discuss the matter with the investigators. Ellen's account is therefore uncorroborated.

Hynek et al. note that although area newspapers, radio, and TV stations carried stories about the Hudson Valley sightings, there was little in the way of national coverage, and that the matter was ignored by officialdom (law enforcement agencies, state governments, etc.). They explain that some sightings arose from small planes flying in formation, but the vast majority of sightings couldn't be accounted for in those terms.

Philip Imbrogno mentions the Hudson Valley case in his recently published book 'Ultraterrestrial Contact' (Llewellyn Publications, Woodbury, Minnesota, 2010). He gives some details that are absent from 'Night Siege'. For example, he refers to sightings of aircraft that were flying in tight formation over the area, and which were found to be operating from a part of Stewart International Airport (formerly a USAF Strategic Air Command base). The suggestion is that the CIA or the military was behind the flights. "It was apparent", Imbrogno writes, "that [they] were trying to fake a UFO, possibly attempting to discredit the real sightings that had recently taken place" (p. 248). Why wasn't this mentioned in 'Night Siege'? To me, its omission is analogous to writing a military history of World War II without mentioning the Battle of Stalingrad or the Battle of Midway! Before reading 'Ultraterrestrial Contact', I gave 'Night Siege' four stars, but I'll now give it three.

In conclusion, I would say that 'Night Siege' is a very interesting book, although I'm disappointed that important information is missing from it. It would have benefited from one or more maps, showing the locations mentioned in the text. It would also have benefited from a more comprehensive index.