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A Dunlap Hollow resident claims that on August 2 he saw what he believes was an unidentified
flying object (UFO) in the southern sky.
The object, he said, was slowly heading east at about 9:45 p.m. It was a glowing object, he
explained, from which a beam of light, like a searchlight, was projected.
Anyone else who made such a sighting is asked to contact John Donaldson at the News-Sickle-
Arrow office.
Source: Black Earth-Mazomanie-Plains, WI Dane County News-Sickle/Cross-Arrow, August 15, 1985
Last week's issue of the News-Sickle-Arrow in Black Earth reported the sighting of an
unidentified flying object on Friday, Aug. 2. Since the article's printing, six additional
persons have contacted the newspaper office in Black Earth saying they saw whatever-it-was also.
The initial report was of a glowing object projecting a beam of light that moved about, as
if searching for something. The sighting was made at about 9:45 p.m. by a resident of Dunlap
Hollow, which is about five miles north of Black Earth. Others who concurred in the sighting
were located in that same area, at the southern edge of Black Earth, and between Black Earth
and Madison in a car.
Further confirmations of the sighting can be registered by calling John Donaldson at the
newspaper office at 767-3655.
Source: Madison, WI Capital Times, August 21, 1985
The night sky was brightly lit Aug. 2 at 9:45 p.m. when 10 people from Cross Plains to Blue
Mounds saw a UFO moving slowly eastward, high in the southern sky.
It was a shining white, much brighter than the surrounding stars and projected a beam of
light that "moved back and forth like a searchlight" according to one witness.
Local observers have been scratching their heads ever since, trying to come up with some
rational explanation for what they saw. So, too, is the National UFO Reporting Center, a
private agency in Seattle, Wash.
To date the center has 21 eyewitnesses in six states, from Iowa to Ohio, who claimed to have
seen the same thing - a huge, white light - at approximately the same time.
Wisconsin Heights junior high school teacher Rogers Keene, 44, was the first to report his
sighting to John Donaldson, editor of the weekly Dane County News.
Keene was walking his dog just a few feet from his rural home, five miles north of Black
Earth, when he first spotted the light. He said it was moving slowly in an eastward direction,
about 75 degrees above the southern horizon. When he first saw it, the light was due south - in
the direction of Black Earth and Mt. Horeb.
The object stopped in the southeast and slowly descended in a zig-zag fashion until it was
about 20 degrees above the horizon. The light then "disappeared into a pinpoint" and winked out.
Keene heard no sound for the two minutes he had the light in view. During that time the
object had a white beam of light moving back and forth. "It was big as my thumb when I stretched
my arm straight out" although "I couldn't tell how far away it was."
Keene said he has sighted "more than 2,000 aircraft," both helicopters and fixed wing, in
the skies around his home but had never seen anything like the light before.
The teacher, since the sighting, has wondered if it was nothing more than a weather balloon
or distant aircraft. Yet "it was different enough for me to run in the house and yell at my
wife to get out there. But she didn't get out on time," Keene added. "I said to myself:
'Wouldn't you know it, just as the other person is going to see it, it goes away.'"
But others in the area claimed they saw the same object. After Keene told Donaldson about
his sighting, the editor ran a small article in his paper for two weeks asking if others had
spotted anything unusual in the skies that night.
Nine people responded, describing the same object. One lives in the Blue Mounds area,
another was driving from Cross Plains to Black Earth on Wisconsin 14 and the others - all in
the Black Earth area - included a teenage boy and a Wisconsin Heights high school teacher.
Neither the National Weather Service or Federal Aviation Administration at Truax Field in
Madison, however, reported any "echoes" on their radar screens, according to federal officials.
At first Donaldson wasn't sure how to take Keene's claim. Following the other reports, he
decided to write a detailed story about the sighting for Thursday's paper.
"I take (the claims) seriously," Donaldson said. "It may have been a weather balloon or
something like that. But I've thought about it for quite awhile. I can't think of anything I'm
aware of that could easily explain it away."
Eleven people in five other Midwest states reported seeing "a bright light, shining beams of
light toward the ground," said Robert Gribble, a spokesperson for the UFO reporting center.
In Batavia, Iowa, a man reported a light moving very low while crossing a highway about
an eighth of a mile from the observer. Two observers saw a similar object in Lakeville, Minn.;
one saw something in Mazon, Ill.; and two spotted a light in New Haven, Ind. Finally, five
spotted a bright object in Orient, Ohio.
The center averages about six reports a night, with 10 being a "busy" night. Gribble asks
that any UFO sightings be called into the center.
Source: Black Earth-Mazomanie-Plains, WI Dane County News-Sickle/Cross-Arrow, August 22, 1985
Rogers Keene is regarded by some as something of an eccentric, given past antics. He's not one
to disagree with this assessment.
Keene, a white-bearded, lanky teacher at the Mazomanie Grade School, has largely created
this image himself by the way he acts and the things he's written. He used to write a column in
this newspaper that was basically devoted to fantasy, though on occasion readers mistakenly
read it as if it were the truth.
That's the reason this Dunlap Hollow resident felt it would be wise to leave his name out of
the stories in past weeks about a possible "UFO" sighting. Yes, folks, the unidentified flying
object seen at about 10 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 2 was first reported to this newspaper by none
other than Rogers Keene.
A man dedicated to dramatic productions and hoaxes in general might be subject to question
in such a matter, so both he and this writer felt it best to leave his name out of it. During
the past two weeks, however, the need to keep Keene out of it diminished - ten others from the
area also reported seeing the bright ball in the sky, and though the stories varied somewhat,
they for the most part concur with what Keene reported.
More importantly, the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, Wash. received a total of 14
reports that same night at the same time - in five states near Wisconsin: Minnesota, Iowa,
Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.
"We consider it a classic incident," said Robert Gribble of the center, because of the
"sequential sightings involved...because it was seen in so many states."
Keene reported seeing the object in the southern sky, which he notes is unusual in his
territory. "My first impression was that it was a plane," he said. He then noted to himself
that virtually all of the planes he sees when outside his home are in the northern sky.
He had no way of gauging how big the object was, but described its relative size by
extending his arm and saying it looked about the size of his thumbnail. What really caught his
eye, however, was its movements.
Keene was out walking his dog when he first noticed the ball of light. He recalls it was
projecting a beam, which looked like a searchlight, and the beam was moving back and forth, as
if scanning. At first it moved to the east, on a constant horizontal plane...then it dropped.
"It started at 75 degrees, and moved down to 30 degrees," he recalled. "I moved back, so I
could continue to see it. Then it seemed to turn, and it became a pinpoint."
"I wasn't going to fantasize anything," stressed the teacher. "It was ten times brighter
than anything I'd seen in the sky. This was unusual."
Keene hurried back to his home as the object was dropping, hoping to get his wife up so she
could validate his sighting, ("You've got to have a witness,") but by the time she woke up, the
thing was under her angle of vision.
The sightings in the states to the south seem to uphold Keene's, however. In Batavia, Iowa,
people reported seeing a huge, white light, hovering very low. In Orient, Ohio, five people
reported seeing the object, and that it shot off at a great rate of speed. Perhaps this is when
Keene saw the object turn into a pinpoint.
Other sightings that night were in Lakeville, Minn., New Haven, Mayjon and Fort Wayne,
Ind., Orent and in parts of Illinois. In addition, there are ten people here who notified the
News-Sickle-Arrow that they too had seen something unusual in the sky.
"I'm a kidder, so I was a little itsy bitsy nervous about telling anybody," admits Keene.
"But really I'm a rationalist...I look for reasons for things."
He couldn't find any for this one...
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