Tuesday, Oct. 11 2011 2:25PM
Rash of UFOs over Lee’s Summit being probed
By Rob Roberts, rroberts@lsjournal.com
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ReprintReports of unidentified flying objects over Lee’s Summit have been flooding into an area office of the Mutual UFO Network, a nonprofit organization that investigates sightings.
And several of them can’t be explained, said Margie Kay, assistant state director for Missouri MUFON.
“Right now, we have over 60 sightings in the Lee’s Summit area from last week alone,” Kay, an Independence resident who volunteers for the organization, said Oct. 11. “We have some reports that were due to a group of pilots flying in formation out of Lee’s Summit. And Whiteman Air Force Base said the B2s are on yellow alert right now and running training missions throughout Missouri this month.
“But we have at least 40 sightings that cannot be explained, some with close encounters and large craft hovering.”
Among the reported objects yet to be explained were “orange balls of fire” seen hovering over yards and intersections in Lee’s Summit, then leaving in an easterly direction, Kay said. The fiery orbs, which reportedly ranged from three to 50 feet in diameter, were seen on Oct. 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, she said.
“Some people have speculated they’re probes from other ships,” she said. “Maybe they’re other life forms. Maybe they’re something natural we just don’t understand yet.”
Kay acknowledged that many of the local sightings seem to have been explained late last week, when pilot Phillip Lamb of Blue Springs stepped forward.
“We’re pretty much the aliens,” Lamb said, explaining that his team of eight pilots flew out of Lee’s Summit Municipal Airport and practiced over this area and Arrowhead Stadium on the evenings of Oct. 3 and 4.
That’s when many of the local UFO reports came in, according to John Ohrazda, manager of the Lee’s Summit airport.
“But when MUFON called me last Thursday, they said there had been a large number of reports spread over several days,” Ohrazda said. “And some of the people described aircraft coming to a complete hover. … Airplanes can’t hover. And they don’t have the lights being described. So I don’t know what these people were seeing.”
According to one report filed with MUFON, a huge object with white and green lights was seen flying about 3,000 to 5,000 feet over Lee’s Summit at about 8:30 p.m., Oct. 3.
The person said, “I noticed what I thought was a low-flying plane” while driving north on Pryor Road. But “as it got closer, I realized how low it was flying and became concerned. Once it was within maybe a half-mile of my location, I realized this was no plane – I had my windows down and (there was) absolutely no sound coming from it.”
On the next evening, a local man told MUFON, he and his wife were driving home from the school they work at when “we saw a strange flashing object in the sky.” “At first, we thought it was an airplane landing at the Lee’s Summit airport,” the man reported. “Then it changed direction, completely turned sideways and showed a vast array of lights – white, green, blue, flashing in a pattern at first, and then quickly pulsating in a random pattern. It then hovered in place for a short time, then rotated back to horizontal. … It then very quickly flew southeast at approximately 300 to 400 mph, then stopped abruptly in the sky over what would be downtown Lee’s Summit.”
Lamb said he figures those reports stemmed from his team, called KC Flight, which was practicing four-aircraft formations over Lee’s Summit on Oct. 3 and six-aircraft formations over Lee’s Summit and Arrowhead stadium on Oct. 4. The team’s Oct. 4 flight might also explain the “close encounters” that Kay said were reported by residents of Raytown.
“One lady saw a very large craft hovering over the Apple Market on 63rd Street,” she said. “It hovered over the store for four minutes, then turned and took off at a high rate of speed. She saw lights in a circular pattern on the side of it.
“Another person reported a craft hovering over the Raytown water tower. It had multiple lights on the bottom that shone down, and no wings, no tail or any of the blinking red or green lights required by (the Federal Aviation Administration).” After hovering over the water tower, Kay said, that craft reportedly “rose up, turned on its side and took off at light speed.”
Lamb chuckled at the reports.
“At night, you don’t have the depth perception you think you do,” he said. “And there’s no point of reference in the sky to tell you how fast something’s moving or whether it’s moving at all.”
The all-aluminum single-engine planes his team uses for wedding, stadium and other types of flyovers are capable of quickly slowing and reaccelerating, Lamb said. And their strobing white, red and green lights can appear to be different colors in different types of weather, he added.
Nevertheless, Lamb’s explanations in the media late last week were rebutted by many who claimed, “There’s no way that was an aircraft,” he said. “Some people are diehard UFO fans, I guess,” Lamb said.
According to Kay, she has been fascinated by UFOs since sighting one herself in 1985.
“It was so strange. I knew it wasn’t anything manmade,” she said.
According to Kay, she’s currently putting together a timeline of all the recent reports in hopes of uncovering more patterns and explanations.
The information will be posted on the organization’s website, www.missourimufon.org.
Those with additional reports are asked to file them on another website, www.mufon.com/reportufo.htm.
“Then I will be contacting them” to investigate the sighting, Kay said.
