August 30, 1970; Vincennes, Indiana
The first interesting case I investigated that year happened in late August, and it involved a man and his wife and seven-year-old daughter. It occurred east of Vincennes, in a subdivision area. On August 30th, at 11:00 AM, the primary witness (who we will refer to as "Mr. W", a good friend and neighbor of my brother Steven), was in the process of packing for a trip. He was interrupted by his daughter who claimed she saw a strange object in the sky. Mr. "W" and his wife went outside and saw the object, as well. He re-entered the house to get his 7x50 binoculars, and when he emerged, the object was now much closer. He described it as a metallic, disc-shaped craft, and "like a garbage can lid with a piece of watermelon on top", hovering over Wheatland Road. The estimated size was 30' in diameter. The witnesses also stated emphatically that someone else MUST have seen it, also. "They had to, it was so low." At the end of the 90 second period of observation the object finally dived and arced out of sight behind a tree line. Estimated range: 1-4 miles. 

Our NICAP group had been discussing the UFO detection system for ten years and had actually built some prototypes. But now it was time to get serious. We desperately needed an "early warning system" and a way to get better data, instrumented if possible. With the help of a local scientist who was one of our technical advisers, Lewis Blevins, we completed construction on a magnet variometer to try and detect a disturbance in the local magnetic field and, possibly, ...... a UFO.

Nine days after the daylight disc sighting (with only two dozen detections to its name in the 20 years of operation) the crude UFO detector  picked up something on September 8th.

September 8, 1970; Vincennes, Indiana - Event #1
Notably unusual was the event-time. It was 4:45 in the afternoon. But, there were no visual sightings reported for that particular day. In 1970 there was no UFO "grapevine", nor was there any rapport with the media and law enforcement as we later had. And there was no published UFO "hotline".

September 22, 1970; Vincennes, Indiana - Event #2
12:30 PM. Both had been daylight events, but with no reported visual sightings. The chance of a coincidence was mighty slim, but we couldn't prove anything.

October 2, 1970; Vincennes, Indiana - Event #3
The third time the unit was triggered was October 2nd, at 9:55 PM. Again, there were no reports filed. What's interesting here is that the detection events and the documented daylight disc sighting in August were all daylight events, except for the October disturbance. Later experience with the system proved that this was normal for UFOs and E-M disturbances. But there was more to be learned. 1971 - 1972

My last promotion involved yet another transfer in January of 1973, this time back to Indiana at Mt. Vernon, near Evansville, where I reside to this day. 

By this time I had devised a sophisticated system that I called, "MADAR", which stands for "Multiple Detection and Automated Recording." I don't have "brainstorms" very often, but this one even Mr. Blevins would have been proud of.  And in 1973 I was a "lone wolf" in a new town and no enthusiasts or team to help me. But soon that would all change. Even before the wave hit I had used every opportunity to use the news media and set up a local "UFO Filter Center". (For a detailed description of how the MADAR system worked, see separate paper at

Purpose_&_Scope

The 1973 wave had begun in the fall, and notable sightings were coming from areas in NE Indiana at Eaton on the October 9th where Baer Field had tracked an unknown on radar and officials received over 750 phone calls! On the 11th, two fishermen, Charles Hickson & calvin Parker were apparently abducted at Pascagoula, MS. That same evening, at Laurel, Indiana, a classic flying saucer with a sound like a swarm of bees was witnessed at tree-top level by five persons for three minutes. On the 15th at dusk near Huntington, Indiana, a farmer, his wife and daughter  were terrorized  by a UFO with colored lights that followed their truck at about 500 feet. Huntington, was supposed to have had another radar track, but this was never confirmed. There were many other sightings, but the next one was close-by and very impressive:

On October 18th, a lady living on Ford Road, about 8-miles east of the MADAR site, had gone to bed about 10:30 PM and had heard a strange noise, "like barge on the river". A few minutes later she just had to go out and look. Her home is near an air traffic corridor and, in fact, a VORTAC station is located further south of her on the same road less than a mile away. But this was object was no airplane.  This was something that looked like a group of about 50 lights in  a rectangular pattern.  The object, heading east to west, now turned south. The end section was now similar to a squared-off cigar. The dogs didn't bark and the control tower at Evansville said there was no known aircraft in the area. And, believe it or not, thirty minutes later Captain Coyne and his crew encountered their internationally famous UFO at  Mansfield, Ohio.

Just thirty hours later, on October 20th, at 6:50 AM, between the Mt. Vernon & Evansville, a UFO apparently stopped a train! And this was an E-M case that I personally investigated.   Incident Report.

November 1, 1973; Mt. Vernon, Indiana - MADAR Event #4.
At 9:47 PM on November 1st, MADAR was triggered. The background radiation level was 18 cpm, normal for the area, but something had caused the disturbance. Something probably within a five-mile radius had tripped the sensor, right at the peak in sightings. If somebody saw an object nearby, they didn't report it. But that evening there was a sighting of a blue and green light at Bufkin, just a few miles north of the MADAR site. It had moved up and down, back and forth, beginning at 10:40 PM and there was a humming noise associated with it.  This was a close encounter that could have happened in any week of any year, but it happened during the peak in U.S. sightings. 

The next evening, November 2, a UFO was reported near the MADAR site at Mt, Vernon at l0:20 PM. Two warehouse men at Mt. Vernon Milling Co. saw an object. "I went to check my hopper cars. Climbing up onto the car I happened to look back. I stood on top and watched the object until it disappeared." In 15 seconds it was gone. It was "about six blocks away", 60-80 feet in the air". The object was orange and wedge shaped. Seventeen minutes later, Police Chief Wilfred Clerk and Officer John Tucker were on a pursuit of a drunken driver in Point Township. The driver had gone off the road and into a ditch. Waiting for a wrecker, the officers observed an object in the southwest that approached them, then stopped. It was a strange-looking object which we now refer to as an "OBOL" (Orange Ball Of Light) and their spotlight placed on it caused the light to get brighter and closer. After about a minute and a half, they put the squad car spotlight on it again and it immediately moved away and out of sight.

July 30, 1974; Solitude, Indiana
8:50 PM. We obtained a good local close encounter case. Our involvement began when the Sheriff contacted me right after the incident had occurred and was reported. Our Rapid Deployment Team of three men were on the road to the area within minutes. Near Solitude, Indiana, just a little over three miles north of us, a Mt. Vernon couple and their little boy were on their way home from a play in New Harmony, heading south on Hwy 69. They observed an object silhouetted against the moonlit haze in the southwest. Although a couple of miles away, the object had a clear cigar shape with three white lights. They continued driving down the highway and, as they got over the top of some hills, the object started to descend, getting larger and larger all the time. Right at the bottom of the hill they slowed down and the object appeared to be hovering. It was approximately a hundred yards from them then, and it was moving, but very slow. The adult male witness reported: "It acted like it was on water or floatin'-like." It now had four lights on it, two on each end, the shadowy object was was long and slender, "kinda cigar-shaped." At one time "it was just right above us, maybe 50-60'. Well, you couldn't believe the size of it. It was real large. We went down the highway just a little further. We were going to park the car, so we pulled in there and were getting out of the car and we couldn't find it. It had just vanished." The object was "thin on the ends" and, "as it got to the middle, it was thicker. But like I say, we could just see the shadow". Duration: 7-18 minutes.

August 15, 1974; Mt. Vernon, Indiana - MADAR Event # 6
MADAR was triggered at 19 minutes after midnight. But this time we had a logical explanation. One of the data recorders tied into the MADAR system mode control panel that recorded sounds in the control room, picked up a clap of thunder almost immediately. A close lightning strike had pulled the sensor off north.  There is always the possibility that a UFO during a severe storm might have actually attracted a strike , but there were no reports of any strange objects being observed.

September 3, 1974 - MADAR Event # 7
9:35 PM. At this time of day the radar at Dress-Regional Airport was NIS (not in service). There were no local sightings reported to us, but with a 10% report rate, where 90% never report what they see, that was not unusual. And as the degree of strangeness increases, that number gets even smaller. However, one of our event recorders showed that background radiation levels were 86% higher than normal. Normal geomagnetic deviations are not accompanied by changes in radiation background. Apparently something unusual was going on here.

These were good UFO years and 1974 became known as the "Year Of The Humanoids." As we will later see, even that may have considerable significance. And in the early years there was enough evidence in the literature to justify the creation and use of a magnet variometer to detect UFOs. But on November 28, there was more evidence. It happened at 11:43 AM over Shabonna, Illinois. A pilot with 3-1/2 years experience was flying from DeKalb to Mendota on a bright day with visibility limited to 6-7 miles due to haze. He had a spectacular UFO encounter and his aircraft compass was "hallucinating" too! ( Report ).

March 26, 1976 - MADAR Event # 8
In 1976 we recorded only one MADAR event. It occurred on March 26th at 8:45 AM, one of the few times MADAR was triggered in daylight hours. Background radiation readings were normal and nobody filed a UFO report. However, the next day at 5:05 PM I saw a daylight object I couldn't explain. It was oblong, looked like a jet airliner without wings, and was cruising to the NW at high speed. The object was within sight for 25 seconds and was pretty high up. I don't know how it attracted my attention as I made the bank deposit, but  I saw it. Maybe it was a distant jet. I'll never know.

July 10, 1977 - MADAR Event #9
On July 10th at 1:04 AM, the siren shattered the early morning silence. I jumped out of bed and headed for the control room downstairs where the equipment was set up, and turned off the audio alarm switch. The delayed alarm siren, now silent, had done its job. While the rest of the County slept, MADAR was recording a 17-pulse disturbance in the local magnetic field. The anomaly lasted 55 seconds. This was the longest disturbance on record at the station at that time and the fluctuations were the most erratic recorded so far by MADAR's event recorder. Background radiation was a normal 16 counts per minute. I had looked outside to see if there was anything in sight, in all directions, but there was nothing unusual, at least near the facility. MADAR was still recording at that time. When I was sure the event had elapsed, I reset the sensor, pulled the data tapes out of the recorders, labeled them and replaced them with new ones. There were no incoming calls to the UFO Filter Center hotline. I had contacted the police department and spoke with Officer Kermit Steele. He hadn't heard anything, either. I then went back to bed.

For days I pondered over what had happened, a little dismayed that I couldn't get what I'd hoped for, for years: a more positive correlation between detections and local sightings. This would be a documented cause-and-effect relationship, more proof that UFOs couldn't all be IFOs, and I would also have the "early warning system". I wanted to be able to grab a camera and run with it, getting a picture to go with the other data. Or, have an independent witness calling in a UFO that was observed at the same time MADAR was picking up an anomaly. Even if I had had a camcorder in those days, it wouldn't have done any good.

MADAR Event # 10
Two days later the siren sounded again! On July 12th, at 1:48 AM, I jumped out of bed with greater expectations. On the data tape there was no reading of the pulse. The first pulse (I call this the "phantom pulse") is the one that turns on the system, therefore it is not recorded. However, the "pulse" is not a actually a quick & short disturbance. When the needle is pulled from north it may take many seconds to minutes to return to normal, indicating the disturbance is not a random or sudden event. This was a one-pulse disturbance, however, with no slow "return", indicating the cause was at the limit of the sensor's range. The needle must have moved just enough to allow just enough light to strike the photo cell, then back to normal. The background radiation reading was 18 cpm, still normal for the area. No calls. No visual sightings from our facility. The police department was alerted, but had heard nothing from callers or cruisers.

MADAR Event #11
A little over two hours later, at 4:35 AM, I was awakened again by the siren, indicating an anomaly was occurring. Two hours and 47 minutes had elapsed and MADAR had recorded another event. This time it was a 5-pulse, 53-second disturbance. Radiation was a normal 16 cpm. I did everything I had trained myself to do in such an event, then once again stumbled back to bed. It wasn't over. And I don't know why, but this time I didn't record the time. I should have, because sometime within an hour, the facility's smoke alarm started beeping. Not screaming, but beeping. There was no smoke or noticeable fumes. The beeping signal indicated that the smoke alarm was not getting enough power, indicating the batteries were low. Later, the batteries were checked and in perfect order and not replaced until six months later! Something had caused the voltage to drop for a very short time. Whatever had caused it was an anomaly in itself, because there was nothing wrong with the unit or the batteries.

MADAR Event #12
Three days later, on July 15th, this time at 10:06 PM, MADAR logged another event. This was a 4-pulse, 4-second disturbance, radiation 13 cpm. Again, it seemed as if it was all a waste of time. There were no UFO reports. Right across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio is a little town in Kentucky, called Bellevue. At 10:45 PM that evening, Mrs. Fern Frey (name changed) was lying in bed with her 11-year-old daughter who was asleep. She was shocked to see her bed light up with a bright green glow. Thinking her home was being burglarized, Mrs. Frey jumped out of bed. (There was a lot of this "jumping out bed" this summer). The glow was coming through one of the two windows in the bedroom. She cautiously peeked through the curtain and watched in bewilderment as the green light retreated, "just like a liquid being drawn up through a straw." In a matter of seconds the light was "siphoned" up into a low hovering object that was shaped like an inverted saucer a couple of hundred feet away. She guessed it was about 30' in diameter and was metallic. The moon's glow reflected on it and she could determine that its visible surface was clearly divided into equal-sized squares. The bottom was in darkness, appearing flat, and it was into this section that the recoiling beam of light was drawn. The object then gracefully lifted and disappeared into a wooded area.

A few days later, on a routine visit to the Mt. Vernon Police Department as part of my local PR work, the dispatcher, Officer Kermit Steele, had advised me that they had picked up transmissions on the police radio from two locations. This had happened RIGHT AFTER I had called him on the 12th! At approximately 2:l0 AM, citizens had been reporting UFOs to police at Mt. Vernon, Illinois, 60 miles to the northwest of us! Also, reports were coming in from Mayfield, Kentucky, 85 miles to the southwest! Finally, I had a correlation! Not a local one, but too much to be a coincidence. That evening a report came in over the KNI Net (police scanner frequency). Somebody had phoned in a report to the Kentucky State Police at Hancock County. They thought they had seen an aircraft "going down". This had happened numerous times. I immediately contacted the Control Tower at Dress-Regional Airport. No aircraft was ever reported missing or crashed. This was either a meteor or, a UFO. We'll never know. But things were starting to look very odd. Coincidences were getting less likely.

MADAR Event #13
This was logged on July 26th. This was in the wee hours again, at 2:20 AM, a one-pulse disturbance, with radiation a normal 16 cpm. I was now getting enough sleep. The events were getting farther apart.

On July 31st, Normal, Illinois, had a daylight sighting of interest. At 6:30 PM, a university art professor called his wife and secretary to see the silver "stretched cigar", three times the size of the moon in length. It was observed for three minutes as it flew in a slow straight path from southwest to northeast, with no trail, no wings, no details, no sounds. The apparent size and duration should impress even an ardent skeptic. Good UFO reports were coming in and MADAR was working. We just needed a local correlation by a credible observer. 

MADAR Event #14
This was logged on August 1st at 10:11 PM. It was a 4-pulse, 4-second disturbance with a 16 cpm reading. It was starting to get boring again.

MADAR Event  #15
The final one for the year, was logged on August 15th at l0:14 PM. It was an 18-pulse, 3-minute and 29-second disturbance. MADAR had logged the best and longest APD so far. And the background radiation reading was 30 cpm, a 100% increase! For the record, this was a significant reading! All that we lacked was what we were looking for,  a good UFO report. MADAR had recorded seven events in a little over a month. Something was going on. This included UFOs reported to law enforcement officers within 60-85 miles, an E-M effect on a smoke alarm, and a significant background radiation reading. But this meager evidence wasn't going to turn any heads. (Update: See major find in 2010!)

1983 - A Long MADAR "Draught"

MADAR Event #17
Then, on July the 5th, it happened again. Fifteen minutes after midnight! No increase in background radiation. The potential significance here is that a major abduction incident took place between two MADAR events. Could some type of UFO operation, regionally wide in scope, be happening at the same time. This was the first indication of the "rain gauge effect" I began to notice. UFO sightings were probably not random events. But what type of events best correlated with MADAR? We needed more data and serious studies.

MADAR Event #19
July 23, 4:19 AM. A one-pulse disturbance. No UFO reports.

MADAR Event #21
Also on May 30th, but thirty five minutes later at 11:14 PM. A  3- pulse 3- sec disturbance was recorded. The only thing of significance reported in the region were two sightings of massive rectangular objects that year. Two weeks after the May MADAR events, there was a good sighting at Frankfort, Kentucky. On June 13th, at11:36 PM, while driving on the Express Connector roadway, a 36-year-old female observed two, large bright white lights moving in her direction. She stopped her car for a better look, and as the lights got closer she could tell that they were attached to a rectangular- shaped object, "massive in size." The woman got out of the car in time to see the craft stop directly overhead and remain in that spot for about two minutes. During that period she could see what appeared to be numerous pipes laying flat against the underside of the vehicle which was illuminated by several lights. 

July 16,1989; New Harmony, Indiana
Daylight disc sightings are rare, so this one has to be a significant factor in any study. This occurred on July 16th, at 10:15 PM, at New Harmony, Indiana, which is just 20 miles north of the MADAR site. I investigated this incident on- the-spot. I was unable to make a suitable rough drawing and get enough information to help staff artist Robert Taylor create one for this book, however. The huge, bright, round object had exhibited some detail during the 2-minute-plus observation, and had illuminated the witness' driveway, alley & pool area. The object reportedly hovered at tree-top level, overhead, and produced no sound, then floated toward the end of the street to the east before it disappeared. Another person present was unable to get out of her van during this period and never saw the object. The witness later said that it was so big that it looked like "one of those TV dishes", referring to a satellite dish. "It was (had been) right over the top of me. It was so huge! It was white as day (outside), no sound at all. It hovered, kind of hesitated. It didn't fly, it just floated. And it was huge." When asked if the lights on it were hard to see because the light was so bright, she replied in the negative. Where was the bright light coming from? "Underneath! And it had a few little spokes like you'd hold your arm out from under a plate (depth perception). And they weren't bright.".

MADAR Event #22
This one occurred on December 15, at 6:03 PM. The event occurred with a momentary power outage so brief that there was no loss of stored info. It was only a flicker of lights and power but the magnet variometer deviated from north, cycled back in 18 seconds, then deviated again in the opposite direction. It was a 2-pulse 18second deviation with no return on second pulse!!!  The sensor housing had to be physically rotated to get the unit back to north. TV Channel 14 at Evansville (20 miles east) reportedly lost all computer graphics and had no explanation for the incident.

MADAR Event #23
This occurred on December 17, at. 9:14 AM. It was "phantom pulse" with again, no return to north". 

December 21, 1989; Martinsville, Indiana
Four days later the we had the spectacular sighting near Martinsville, Indiana, near Indianapolis. On December 21st, between 1:00 & 2:00 AM, a lady and her husband observed two objects while returning to Indianapolis from Bloomington early that Thursday morning. They were driving on Hwy 37 and talking when they noticed something with lights on it over a field. "It was hard to tell the actual shape of the craft but the lights were circular around it. There were orangish yellow lights around the bottom of the craft, but I could not see all the way around it." When they were close enough to see it better (200 yards) they noticed lights here and there around it and could see quite clearly that the object was "hovering above the ground about as high as a helicopter". They had to turn around after passing a pulled-over semi, and when they returned, "the craft was on my (lady's) side of the car and it took off to the west up over a ridge of hills", and then the lights went out. (Field extends approximately 1/4 mile from the road to the trees). "It did not go down, but it disappeared. I very much got the feeling that it knew we were watching." They got back to the main road and headed north to Indy. (Fl found upon checking the area that an Indianapolis Power & Light generating plant was located just over the ridge right near where the object disappeared).

About seven miles down the road they were discussing the sighting and the lady was searching the sky. On her side of the road (east) "there was this craft that was huge and it was right there! It hung in the air. It was a large craft like an aircraft carrier or barge. It was angled or tilted toward me. It had a dome on the back and a long flat area on the front with two huge searchlights. They made me nervous. It just hung there! We stopped the car and I rolled down the window. I could not hear any noise except my heart beating very fast. Daniel was trying to lean around me to see it, but he could not see the whole thing but could see the lights and felt the presence of it (a strange feeling in the joints, energy rushing through his body). That physical feeling stayed with us for quite a while afterward. So we sat and watched it, then it began to move toward me. I did not want the lights to shine on my car and I told Daniel to go. It stopped turning and, as we drove away I continued to watch it until I could not see it anymore."

The main witness described the second craft as "very industrial looking", to heavy to be hanging in the sky. Industrial metallic with intricate squares on the outer sides, metal working that might have been indentations. If this had been a boat, the indentations would be for stairs, wasn't smooth. Dome was smooth looking, iridescent, illuminated from the inside. It was not a high dome. The two lights on the front of the craft were like searchlights."

MADAR Event #24
Dec 22, 1989 10:49 PM One pulse with again, no return to north!!!

December 28, 1989; Mt. Vernon, Indiana
Six days later a somewhat major incident occurred on December 28th, strange happenings began at 8:10 PM, at Mt. Vernon, Indiana. This happened right here in my own home! I was watching television. My nine-year-old son's Christmas gift, a remote controlled car, was acting as if it had a mind of its own. He was having trouble controlling it. The table lamp we have on one end of the family room is equipped with a touch control and, for some reason, it turned on & off every time the phone rang! In other words, if the light were off and the phone would ring, it turned on the light. On the next ring the light got brighter, just as if you had touched it. On the third ring it would go off. For some reason the light control was sensitive to the magnetic fields produced by the phone ringer. Anyway, my son was told to put the toy away since there was a lot of RF radiation from all the new remote controlled appliances and toys since Christmas, but he kept on trying and kept on complaining. Then, within a minute or two, the touch light in the family room went out, then came back on. I remarked, jokingly, "I wonder if we have poltergeists?" At that point the front door burst open and my 13-year-old daughter and her two friends came screaming in, "Dad, come out here quick?" I ran outside. There in the east, just two-to-three blocks away, was the most brilliant reddish-orange navigation light I'd ever seen, and I have seen DC-10's on the runway. This was brighter! In the binoculars the bright red- orange light was alone except for a white strobe which was in the lead as the object (shape of which I couldn't see). It made a turn toward the southeast. There was no green wing light observed (could have been obstructed), and no white navigation light at all on this craft. Most noticeable was the fact that if this was an airplane or helicopter, there WAS NO SOUND? It was very low, approximately 10- degrees, and close enough that there should have been a jet or prop engine, or helicopter blade noise. Also, this was NOT an ultra light aircraft.

The object, based on its departure path, must have passed almost directly over the house at low level, going west to east, then turning southeast. The object also must have been in close proximity about the time of the interference, affecting the remote-controlled car even before that, unless this was all a coincidence. The object faded low in the distance heading southeast.

The very next day my neighbor, frustrated with his new garage door opener, which had the door opening and closing all by itself,  tore it out and installed another one?

By 1990 the interest in pursuing UFO detection waned due to the lack of good UFO reports; local, regional, or national. The project was shut down.