Chapter 21  "Beams of Light”

...At the conclusion of this email, Egercic wrote, “It does surprise me that [Charlie] thinks it was a half-mile away. That would verify Halt's claim of hearing chatter on the radio of strange lights near the WSA, but it doesn't verify anyone's claim yet of a UFO beaming lights down [onto] the WSA structures.”

 

A couple of days later, Egercic sent me Waters’ contact information and I called him. He told me, “There was some commotion in the WSA that night. Someone saw this object, I don’t remember who, and called out to us. I think my ART partner was Rob Isbell, but I’m not certain. But we looked and saw this spinning light—a multicolored light, I can’t really remember the colors—anyway, this craft was hovering and then slowly descended toward the forest. We ran up on one of the berms to get a better view of it. Then we reported it [to Central Security Control]. I remember I used a couple of expletives and was warned not to use profanity on the radio. I think I was talking to a guy named [Alfred] Coakley, anyway, he’s the one I remember talking to most of the time that night. The next morning, I talked to one of the operations officers who told me that [a small group of SPs] had gone out to the woods and had seen some burn marks on trees, about three feet off the ground. He said it looked like, whatever it was, had bounced from tree to tree coming down. The person who told me that wasn’t our flight’s shift commander. He was another officer, but I don’t remember his name.” 

 

I asked Waters if he could remember the timing of his sighting, relative to the widely-reported events in late December 1980. He said, “It was definitely that same week, and I think it was a midnight shift, maybe our last midnight shift [in that group of three]. Anyway, I never heard about any other UFO sightings that week. When Tim [Egercic] mentioned that there had been sightings on four nights that week, that was news to me. I didn’t see anything about all of that until many years later, on TV. But what struck me most was that the way [Penniston and Burroughs] described what they saw—the shape of the craft, which they said was triangular—was nothing like what we saw at the Weapons Storage Area. Also, I think Colonel Halt said they saw [on another night] a big round object that broke into smaller objects. We didn’t see that.”

 

I asked Waters to describe the UFO he and his ART partner saw, using my standard question, “If you held a dime at arm’s length, was it larger than that?” Waters immediately said, “Yes! I would say it was, when I first saw it, as large as a, uh, cantaloupe held at arm’s length! It was big! It was spinning and, I think, had a light on the bottom of it, but I’m not sure. I also think I saw something sticking out on the bottom, uh, like a rod or something like that.” I quickly asked Waters if he ever saw anything resembling a beam of light coming out of the UFO. “No, nothing like that, at least what I saw. Nothing coming out and going down to the ground, or anywhere else.”

 

I asked Waters if the UFO had ever been over the Weapons Storage Area itself. He replied, “Not that I saw. It never came directly over our heads. It stayed just over the trees and moved [from our vantage point] slowly from right to left until it, I think, disappeared behind them. To be honest, I don’t remember where it went, but it was descending when I saw it. It was pretty amazing. I didn’t immediately think “alien”, you know, I was just perplexed. Also, I remember the animals were going crazy. There were cows mooing and, uh, farm animal noises in the distance. It was almost like they were screaming!”

 

I asked Waters if he could remember who had been in the WSA’s tower that night. He replied, “Not really, it might have been Rick Bobo but I’m not sure...It could have been Dennis Karnatz.” [When Tim Egercic later called Karnatz, on my behalf, he denied being in the WSA tower that week, denied witnessing a UFO, but declined to talk to me.]

 

Because Bobo said the UFO he had seen from the tower lingered in the vicinity of the woods for several, perhaps five, hours, I asked Waters whether he recalled the commotion he saw in the WSA lasting that long, or whether it had settled down soon after he saw the UFO leaving the area. He replied, “I don’t recall. After I made my report, I went back to patrolling my area. I figured other people were handling it. I didn’t hear much radio chatter after it left, but if [the incident] became a law enforcement [issue, not involving the security police] they would have discussed it on another channel and I wouldn’t have heard that.”...