Subject: UFO Sighting Reports
Below is the result of your feedback form.
It was submitted by (JMcDGwin@aol.com)
on Monday, March 17, 1997 at 02:19:35
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name: John G.
location: Philmont Scout Ranch, Cimarron, NM
date: July 4, 1966
time: dusk


sighting: Our contingent of ten scouts, known to the Philmont Scout Ranch as group number 6-29-J-1, was returning from a Fourth of July campfire--I believe it was at the Beaubien (sp?) campsite. The sun had just set several minutes before, but the reds and yellows of dusk were still visible in the west. Someone called our attention to a satellite travelling east across the sky, not an uncommon sight even in 1966, but we stopped to watch it, partially because it was so bright (half again as bright as Mars or Venus) and partially because it was doing something we'd never seen a satellite do. Most satellites travel at a constant speed, looking much like airplanes, except that there is only one light instead of an airplane's several--some white, some red-- and the light reflected from a satellite is also constant, not blinking.

But this "satellite" was slowly blinking on and off. As we watched, it would disappear for maybe a second, then reappear a degree or two farther along its course, still travelling at the same speed. Within moments, all of us had stopped and were staring at the "satellite", not knowing what to make of its "blinking". We watched in silence for perhaps twenty seconds while it slowly crossed to a point directly over us. Then it did something we had never seen any satellite do. It stopped. It doubled or maybe tripled in brightness, and stopped blinking, just staying in the same spot for maybe seven seconds! And then, as we all gasped, it shot 180 degrees back in the direction from which it had come, taking perhaps one second to fly out of sight over the western horizon from the point over our heads where it had stopped.

That's all. None of us could figure it out. No satellite could stop and change course, much less travel that fast. No aircraft of which I knew then or know now can travel that fast. Fourth of July fireworks? Not allowed on Philmont, and besides, we'd all seen fireworks. No, this was something else.

I've lost contact with all ten of the scouts--they'd all be in their mid to late forties now, I guess (I'm 49)--but I'm sure any of them would remember what we all saw that night some thirty years ago.
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