Article/Document:

Illinois UFO Sighting Report by NIDS: Abstract

National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS)

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Summary: Abstract from the report of the investigation by the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) on the 2000 Illinois UFO sighting, including a summary of interviews conducted during the investigation.

The National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) 24-hour hot line (702-798-1700) received a report at 3:46 am Pacific time on 1/5/2000 from a police officer at Milstadt, Illinois. The officer reported an unidentified flying object seen by a business owner and several police officers at Lebanon, Millstadt, Shiloh and Dupo, Illinois. The report to NIDS came approximately two hours after the sighting.

After multiple telephone calls to the locale, NIDS dispatched two investigators to the location to conduct face-to-face interviews with eyewitnesses. The following can be summarized from the interview transcripts:

The civilian, who had driven to his miniature golf course in Highland at 4:01 AM, reported an object like “a floating house” with very bright internal lights flying at a low altitude from northeast and moving southwest. The object was two to three stories high and was the length of a football field. The eyewitness immediately drove to the Highland PD and reported the sighting. The police dispatcher from Highland contacted The Central Communications dispatcher from St. Clair County, who in turn requested the Lebanon Police Department to look out for the object.
At approximately 4:10 am the police officer from Lebanon, responding to the dispatch from Highland, reported a low flying “massive elongated triangle” emitting intense white light. The object came to within 1000 feet of the witness and then appeared to rotate slowly and fly extremely quickly and suddenly across the sky toward Shiloh, Illinois. The maneuver was executed with no noise. The officer had turned off his vehicle engine, his light bar and his main police radio so that he could listen for noise.
A police officer from Shiloh reported a large black arrowhead shaped craft that was moving slowly. The object then gathered speed and flew about four to five miles across the sky at a very high rate of speed. According to the officer, who was watching from his vehicle with the windows rolled down and the engine shut off, this maneuver was executed silently. Since there was little, if any wind at the time, this maneuver is judged to be inconsistent with the behavior of a blimp.
A Millstadt police officer described the object flying very slowly between 500 and 1000 feet altitude. It was very large. It was shaped like a fat arrowhead. The rear of the object was concave and looked to contain dim, white, flashing strobes.
According to the testimony from the police officers, the flight path of the object was in a southwesterly direction from Highland, over Lebanon, Shiloh, Millstadt and then turning northwest to Dupo. The flight path would have taken the object almost directly over Scott Air-Force base. According to all inquiries by NIDS, including interviews with two separate AFOSI officers on the base, nothing was in the air from Scott Air Force base that night between 4:00 and 5:00 am. All individuals disavowed knowledge of any flying objects in the region around Scott AFB.
Two separate inquiries from NIDS to the Boeing St. Louis facility showed that Boeing does not conduct testing of military aircraft at their facility. According to Boeing, the facility conducts acceptance testing of newly manufactured (from the assembly line) aircraft during the day at the local commercial airport. A Boeing spokesperson confirmed that there were no Boeing St. Louis derived aircraft flying around St. Louis and surrounding areas during the early morning (midnight to sunrise) dark hours of Jan 5, 2000.
This report will contain short summaries of each eyewitness testimony followed by transcripts. The appendix will contain original drawings by three police officers as well as copies of the original reports and transcripts from the dispatch communications.

Because of the intense media publicity surrounding the case both locally and nationally, NIDS has received additional potential eyewitness leads to investigate. The investigation of the case is ongoing and will be updated on the NIDS website www.nidsci.orgin the next few days when more data is available.