(VG) The Great Blackout Of 1965

Val Germann
Columbia, Missouri

(Much of the information for this message is taken from Raymond
Fowler's UFOS; INTERPLANETARY VISITORS, 1974.)

The Great Northeast Blackout of November, 1965, is an event this
writer remembers very well.  It was in the news for weeks and was
never satisfactorily explained.  That is, if you were reading all
the material in the press about the blackout you soon realized
that those who should have known what had happened -- DIDN'T.  By
year's end the NBC Evening News was talking about UFOs seen near
Syracuse at the moment the lights went out.  But that wasn't the
half of it, as I was to learn as the years went by.

At a meeting of the Greek Astronomical Society in February of
1967 the members sat astounded as Dr. Paul Santorini, the most
famous scientist in Greece, who had been a personal friend of
Einstein and a former member of the Manhattan Project team, began
to talk about, of all things, flying saucers.  In the course of
his talk he made this statement:

"Power blackouts in New York in November 1965 and in the eastern
U.S. and Mexico about the same time, were possibly caused by UFOs
flying along power lines."

The blackout made news all around the world and stories about the
power failure and the reaction to it were legion.

In the year following Santorini's talk, in July, 1968, Dr. James
McDonald made the following statement to Congress in response to
a question about the Great Northeast Blackout:

"UFOs have often been seen hovering near power facilities.  There
are a small number of . . . system outages coincident with the
UFO sightings.  One of the cases was Tamaroa, Illinois.  Another
was a case in Shelbyville, Kentucky, early last year.  Even the
famous one, the New York Blackout, involved UFO sightings."

"I went to the Federal Power Commission for data.  There were
reports all over New York just after the power failure.  They
didn't take them seriously although they had many dozens of
reports for that famous evening.  There were reports all over New
England in the midst of that blackout and five witnesses near
Syracuse, New York, saw a glowing object ascending within about a
minute of the blackout."

"This is a disturbing series of coincidences that I think warrant
much more attention than they have so far received."

Raymond Fowler, a GTE engineer living in New England and an
investigator for NICAP, followed up the blackout and found that
there had been a buildup of power plant sightings in New England
leading up to the event.  Numerous UFOs had also been seen flying
or hovering over or near the many power lines that criss-crossed
the region.  A flap had been building in New England since early
in the year, bringing John Fuller and other national-level
writers to the area.  The Barney and Betty Hill story was to come
out the investigation of this UFO sighting wave.

Then, at 5:15 pm on November 9, 1965, pilot Wendon Ross and a
passenger were in a light plane flying over Clay, New York on
their way into Hancock Field at Syracuse.  As they passed over
the power lines of the Clay substation they were startled by a
huge reddish ball of fire that appeared just above the lines and
ascended into the sky!  At that moment the lights went out,
pitching upstate New York plus Toronto and most of Ontario into
total darkness!  The view from that plane must have been awesome!

At the airfield, Deputy Aviation Commissioner Robert Welsh saw
this fireball and then TWO OTHERS, ten minutes apart, coming up
from different sections of the power line.  One of these two
later apparitions coincided almost exactly with the second stage
of the Great Blackout, the one that sent New York City into the
stygian darkness of the pre-electric age.

Four years ago I was told by one of my students that a woman near
Boonville, Missouri had recently been badly frightened by a UFO.
In a telephone conversation with her I learned that she and her
10-year-old son were in their car, backing out of their driveway
onto a county road south of Boonville, when a brilliant light
snapped on above them, lighting up the entire valley (albeit a
small one) in which they lived.

My informant was shocked and after a few seconds shut off her car
and rolled down the window, finding that the light was coming
from a brilliant object, pure white, hovering above the road
right beside the top of a large oak tree.  It hurt to look at the
object and it made no sound.  By his time the 10-year-old was
screaming to go and so his mother re-started the car and sped
away toward town, not looking back until she had attained the
bluff top to the north.  When she looked back she saw that the
small, brilliant object had converted itself into a giant ball of
orange fire, dwarfing their house in size.  Upon seeing this my
informant stood on the gas even harder and fled to Boonville,
staying with relatives for two days before going back home.

Then, as is usual, my informant asked me what it was that she had
seen.  What could I say?  I said that I had no idea but what she
had seen but it had been seen before.  In fact, I said, similiar
objects had been seen at the time of the Great Blackout of 1965!
Thankfully, we have had no Blackouts around here -- yet!

VG
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