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The Hudson Valley Boomerang

Bob Pratt

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Summary: An overview of the Hudson Valley sightings by Bob Pratt, co-author of Night Siege (with J. Allen Hynek and Philip Imbrogno), one of the primary books on these sightings.

Huge triangular or V-shaped UFOs have been reported countless times throughout the world over the past thirty to forty years, with one of the most active areas being the Hudson River Valley just north of New York City.

Between 1982 and 1995, more than seven thousand cases were investigated and documented by a team of investigators led by Philip J. Imbrogno, a high school science teacher and astronomer in Greenwich, Connecticut.

The heaviest period was between the end of 1982 and 1986, when more than five thousand people reported seeing the object.

Sometimes called the “Westchester Boomerang” because some of the earliest reports came from Westchester County in New York State, it was huge and often flew close to the ground, so low that gray superstructure could be seen linking numerous multi-colored lights.

Numerous sightings were also reported in neighboring New York counties as well as in nearby Connecticut.

One awed witness, an IBM program manager, said: “If there is such a thing as a flying city, this was a flying city… It was huge.”

It was enormous, awesome and spectacular. It moved slowly and silently and was easily as big as a football field; some witnesses said as big as three football fields. That would make it anywhere from three hundred to nine hundred feet long, far larger than any aircraft manufactured in the world.

Thousands of people, many of them highly educated professionals, went on record as saying that the Boomerang was undeniably very real to them. The great majority of people interviewed had no previous interest in UFOs. They were taken completely by surprise.

FAA DENIED ANYTHING HAPPENED

Many witnesses were separated geographically and were unknown to each other at the time of the sightings. Police records show that countless residents phoned their local police stations in concern, and police officers themselves witnessed this strange spectacle.

From the nation's scientists, to whom these events should have been of breathtaking concern, nothing was heard.

Hundreds of people living in the affluent suburbs within commuting distance of one of the world's largest and most cosmopolitan cities were astonished, awestruck, and frightened by what they could only regard as a very bizarre event. But the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which monitors the air lanes through which the boomerang-shaped object flew repeatedly, persisted in denying its existence.

There may have been more than one object because several times sighting reports came in about the same time from towns some distance apart.

Witnesses came from all walks of life, including housewives, office workers, aircraft designers, truck drivers, construction workers, nurses, doctors, pilots, engineers, bookkeepers, technicians and scientists. Many skeptical police officers changed their minds when they saw the Boomerang themselves.

Many times it hovered or moved ever so slowly. Once, a man was able to jog underneath and keep up with it. At times it hovered or drifted very slowly over major expressways, causing traffic to come to a confused halt.

At other times it moved with incredible speed. One husband and wife said it was six stories tall and that it shot off to the far horizon and immediately came back to the same spot in barely a second.

One night, a policewoman sitting in her cruiser watching for speeders was astonished to see a string of white lights in a half-circle hover over her vehicle for twenty seconds. She was so surprised that she never thought to aim her radar gun at it.

UFO FLASHES LIGHT AT CROWD

In another town on another night, a policeman responding to a phone call found ten people standing watching a circle of flashing red, blue and green lights hovering about five hundred feet overhead. The object appeared to be three hundred feet wide.

The officer turned his spotlight on it – and the object immediately projected a brilliant flash of white light down on him and the spectators. Seconds later it shot off out of sight.

On the night of July 24, 1984, twelve security guards watched as a boomerang-shaped object hovered for more than ten minutes directly above one of the reactors of the Indian Point nuclear power plant. This is located on the Hudson River at Buchanan, twenty miles north of Manhattan.

It was so large that one officer had to pan a security camera on the plant’s roof 180 degrees to take in the whole object. Inside the security console, the computer that controlled all the security and communication systems shut down.

The incident was so shocking that the commander contacted a nearby National Guard unit and asked that a helicopter be sent to shoot the object down. Before the action could be carried out, the UFO moved away. Later, authorities denied anything happened.

During the unusually long period of sightings and encounters, numerous witnesses reported having had contact with some kind of extraterrestrial intelligence. More than sixty people said they had had been abducted, with women between the ages of twenty five and thirty representing the largest number of cases.

Philip Imbrogno reported that among witnesses who said they’d had multiple contacts, a very high percentage had B-negative type blood, although what the significance of that is has not yet be determined.

MEDIA REMAINS LARGELY SILENT

Initially, it was thought the Boomerang was seen primarily in the half dozen counties of New York and Connecticut immediately north of New York City. But later it was learned that the object had visited a much larger area to the west, north and east.

Sightings tapered off after the heavy 1982-1986 period but have never stopped. They have continued sporadically ever since.

The United States has perhaps the most extensive, sophisticated and freest mass communications system in the world. Trivial events are often flashed everywhere. Yet, news of this astounding happening was carried on only one network.

The American media has remained largely silent about this spectacular phenomenon, either from ignorance or, more likely, on purpose. Area newspapers, radio and television stations did carry stories, but there was little in the way of national coverage.

The authorities, for the most part, were no help. Some police departments were sympathetic to witnesses and investigators and some weren’t. A few were outright antagonistic.

The FAA denied anything unusual was happening in the skies over the Hudson Valley, even though some air traffic controllers privately acknowledged tracking unknown objects on radar.

Some authorities tried to explain the sightings as simply small planes flying in formation – even at times when strong winds were blowing – and even ultra lights, which rarely fly at night because it is too dangerous and are almost impossible to fly in formation.

Many people believed the Boomerang was a spaceship from another world. Wedo not know. We can only speculate.

It definitely was not a secret weapon, nor a hologram, nor a formation of planes, helicopters or blimps, nor, we believe, anything else man-made. There is no conventional explanation for the Hudson Valley UFO.

These investigations are described in two books, NIGHT SIEGE: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings (Ballantine, 1987) by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Philip J. Imbrogno and Bob Pratt, NIGHT SIEGE Second Edition (Llewellyn, 1998), and CONTACT OF THE FIFTH KIND, by Philip J. Imbrogno and Marianne Horrigan (Llewellyn, 1997).

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