Reports put UFO near airport

A Chetek family driving on Hwy. 53 near Hwy. 8 at about 9:40 on Monday evening, April 14 is convinced they had an encounter with a UFO. Sheriff’s dispatch logs have reports from Chetek and Cameron at about the same time.

But Rice Lake airport manager Jerry Stites said he reviewed the survelliance tapes from the airport, which could have recorded activity along Hwy. 53, and found nothing unusual. He did say, however, that the tape showed an aircraft doing touch-and-go landings at the airport from about 9:20-10:35 p.m.

The family that reported the incident was Julie Hauser and her children, Christina, 20, Mariah, 16, and Josh, 13, all of Chetek. They first saw the object when they were driving northbound on Hwy. 53, taking Christina to her job at Wal-Mart.

"Christina said ‘What is that?’" said Julie.

"I thought it might be some new-fangled helicopter, then it turned on all those lights," she said.

Julie said the UFO, which was larger than a semi, seemed to come directly to their pickup truck from the area of the airport. She said it hovered above the truck, only about 15-20 feet away. She said there was also a semi and another car on the road, and that the semi was swerving, possibly trying to get a look at what was going on.

"It was just the scariest thing" she said.

She said the object looked like a "sideways teardrop," and had blue, green and white lights, and had a purple flashing light at the pointed end.

Stites said airport runway lights will cause strange sightings, particularly in cloudy or hazy weather, but Hauser said the UFO was definitely not a result of airport lights.

"There were lights on it that were lit. They were on the thing. I don’t know anything that has purple lights on it," she said. She said the object quickly darted off.

"It turned and switched directions so fast," she said.

Christina said she always has a cell phone, with a camera, with her, but that night she was in a hurry and left her phone at home, which she never does.

Julie said they dropped Christina off at Wal-Mart, and that they had another encounter on the way back home. She said the object again launched from the airport and came toward their truck.

Josh said for a bit it looked like the craft landed, and that it had a red laserlike light when it went near the airport.

"It just sat there in midair, about 5 feet off the ground," he said.

Julie said it followed the truck for about 4 miles, then suddenly disappeared.

Julie said although brightly lit, the object made no noise at all.

"It was nothing from this planet," she said.

"This is a real sighting. This is the real thing," she said.

Spooner’s Highway Patrol district had no log entries about UFOs, nor were there any entries in the Polk County sheriff’s log.

But the Barron County Sheriff’s Department log had an entry at 10:19 that stated "Three officers saw it too. Cameron, Chetek and Vince Graf." Graf is a county deputy.

Cameron police officer Ryan Hulback was on duty Monday evening. He said he saw something in the air near the intersection of Hwy. 8 and 53. He said it wasn’t unusual.

"What I saw appeared to be a helicopter," he said.

Medical transport helicopters are based at the Rice Lake airport, but Stites said there was no record of helicopter flights during that time period.

Chetek’s police log notes that at 10:28 p.m. all units were asked to look for a UFO between Cameron and Rice Lake. Reported was an object with four evenly spaced lights changing color from purple to orange to blue. The object was there for about 30 minutes and then disappeared.

Sheriff Tom Richie said Graf saw "some strange type of lighting, unusual lighting that he hadn’t seen before, but it certainly could have been some type of aircraft, some type of military training, who knows what it could be." -04/16/08