SCHOOLYARD UFO ENCOUNTERS
Schoolyard UFO Encounters
100 True Accounts
Preston Dennett
CONTENTS
Introduction…6
PART ONE: SIGHTINGS…15
Burritt College…16
Prestonburg Elementary School…17
Irving Elementary School…19
Elder Park Primary School…21
East Burlington Public Middle School…22
Ecole Les Rousses…23
Jerome Elementary School…24
A School in Nashville, Tennessee…28
Whitsett Elementary School…29
Eleven Schoolyard Encounters…32
Xiaoping Primary School…37
Rickmansworth Grammar School…39
Fleetwood Elementary School…41
Bishopbriggs School…43
Omak Elementary School…45
Huanchuan County Middle School #8…46
Markleville Elementary School…47
Lowell Elementary School…48
Beverly High School & Gordon College…51
Hotchkiss High School…56
Sacred Heart Elementary School…58
Spring Creek Elementary School…60
Viedma University…62
Union High School…63
Alexander Elementary School…64
Public Elementary School #54…65
Richmond School…67
Foxcroft Boarding School…69
Banchory Primary School…70
Normandie Avenue Elementary School…72
Our Lady of Mercy Elementary School…73
Johnstown Elementary School…74
Western Carolina University…76
Andrew Louw Primary School…77
Xi’an City Middle School #3…79
Eastbourne Boarding School…80
Steeple Ashton Elementary School…82
Rhosybol Elementary School…83
Downey Elementary School…86
Elmont Elementary School…88
Maplewood Elementary School…89
Upton Primary School…90
Florence Elementary School…92
Wuhan University…93
St. Mark’s Primary School…95
North Carolina School for the Deaf…96
Adams Middle School…98
Vendome Boarding School…100
Fairless Hills School…101
Cloverdale Elementary School…102
A School in Iron Mountain, Michigan…103
McDonough Elementary School…105
Milton Elementary School…106
Clayton High School…108
Rockville High School…109
Texas School Bus Encounter…111
West Nussa School…112
PART TWO: LANDINGS AND HUMANOIDS…113
Kelso School…114
St. Joseph Elementary School…116
A School in Altus, Oklahoma…117
Bedonwell Primary School…118
Evansville High School…121
Conard High School…122
An Elementary School in Mentor, Ohio…125
Deer Creek Middle School…127
Point Pleasant School…128
Point Elementary School…129
Hillsdale College…133
Westall High School…136
Duncan Falls Elementary School…148
Crestview Elementary School…149
Peebles Elementary School…155
Patrick Henry Junior High School…157
Westmoreland High School…158
Villafranca de los Barros Jesuit College…159
Nathaniel Hawthorne College…160
Stowell Elementary School…162
A High School in Missouri…163
Fort Stockton Elementary and Junior High School…168
Rosemead High School…172
Lewisburg High School…174
A High School in Atlanta, Georgia…175
Lautoka Methodist Mission School…177
Falls Elementary School…178
Whitehorse School…180
Broad Haven Elementary School…182
Ocean Knoll Elementary School…186
Montvale Memorial Elementary School…189
Loreto School…192
Campbell College…194
Hainault School…195
Passo Tempo School…196
Stagg Street Elementary School…197
Tierra y Libertad Primary School…201
Roosevelt Elementary School…202
Ariel Elementary School…204
Adikiram Primary School…213
Conclusions…216
Sources…220
About the Author…231
Books by Preston Dennett…232
Introduction
When I first began investigating UFOs in 1986 -- after discovering that my friends, family and co-workers were having dramatic UFO encounters -- I had no idea what I was getting into. I would never have guessed that more than thirty years later, I would still be investigating UFOs, writing books, speaking at conferences, and appearing on radio and television. Of course, back then I didn’t know how much evidence there was that UFOs and extraterrestrials are visiting our planet. I was actually a late-comer to the field. Many people had been studying this subject for a very long time. There were mountains of evidence. The proof that aliens are here was already in the public arena, enough evidence, I think, to convince any skeptic willing to objectively examine it. I couldn’t understand why this subject wasn’t being taken more seriously, why it wasn’t being taught in schools, why it wasn’t front page news.
I soon learned, however, that things weren’t quite that simple. As I delved deeper into UFO research, I found myself embroiled in a subject that was fraught with controversy. There was an active and ruthless cover-up by the U.S. government, and other governments, and a policy to ridicule, deny and lie about a subject that highly-placed officials knew was real. There were professional debunkers whose goal was to attack not only the subject, but those who researched it. There were government disinformation agents paid with our own tax dollars to introduce false data with the expressed purpose of hindering the progress of UFO research.
And it didn’t stop there. The subject attracted greedy hoaxers who only wanted to make money, or fool people. It attracted cult-like fringe groups. The entire subject was scoffed at by much of the mainstream scientific community which seemed unwilling to even examine the evidence.
But most importantly, it involved many thousands (or more likely millions) of people who had seen UFOs or extraterrestrials -- people who had been taken onboard a craft. After wading through all the other stuff, it was this area which continued to draw my interest, and also the area I focused my research -- on people who have actually had UFO experiences. I found many such people within my own circle of family, friends and co-workers. I soon learned that there were many more beyond that. It became clear that there were a lot of people having UFO experiences.
Although I have devoted more than thirty years of my life to researching this subject, I am still uncovering cases that fill me with awe and wonder.
Which brings us to the subject of this book: schoolyard UFO encounters.
In 2016, Dr. Roger Stankovic, the National Director of MUFON Australia posed a question on Facebook that few have asked. Writes Stankovic:
“Aliens on the playground?
“Over the past fifty years UFOs have appeared in broad daylight sporadically at various schoolgrounds over four continents around the world.
“Listing the top four sightings we have:
“1. Westall High School, Victoria, Australia. 11:00 a.m., April 6, 1966. Two hundred or more witnesses including teachers and students.
“2. Broad Haven Primary School, Haverfordwest, South Wales. About 1:30 p.m., February 4, 1977. Fourteen witnesses being of primary school age witnessed a silver cigar-shaped object.
“3. Crestview Elementary School, Opa-locka, Florida, USA. 10:00 a.m., April 7, 1967. Approximately 200 elementary age schoolchildren and teachers Bob Apfel, Virginia Martin and Marian Waters witnessed an oval or cigar-shaped UFO. Moreover, an independent witness, Mrs. Mary Troesser, also said she witnessed the same UFO from her backyard in the direction of the Crestwood Elementary School.
“4. Ariel School, Ruwa, Zimbabwe, Africa. 10:15 a.m., September 16, 1994. Sixty-two primary school-aged witnesses saw two hovering UFOs and the presence of two entities that came out of the vehicles.
“What purpose do UFOs have in appearing at schoolgrounds? Why did they appear when students are likely to be having recess or lunch?”
These are all great questions. And Stankovic is not the first to ask them.
To Stankovic’s list, I would also add one more well-known encounter: Hillsdale College, Hillsdale Michigan. 10:30 p.m., March 21, 1966. Eighty-seven students, school administrators and police observed a glowing object which hovered, darted around and landed next to the school.
Following the Hillsdale sightings, pioneering researchers Coral and Jim Lorenzen (the founders of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, APRO) realized that UFOs were strangely attracted to schools. They also had a theory as to why. In March 1966, with no knowledge of the Westall High School encounter about to occur two weeks later, Coral Lorenzen wrote, “We have mentioned previously that an outstanding number of sightings of UFOs have been made in the vicinity of or over schoolyards. If the appearance of the objects over cities for long periods of time and repeatedly during the last year indicates an attempt at indoctrination, it may be that a peaceful contact may be attempted, and that schools are being overflown and the craft are exhibiting themselves there for a very good reason: Children are definitely less subject to dogmatic or pre-conceived notions than adults. Perhaps the visitors hope that exhibitions over schools will influence the population to some extent.”
At the same exact time that the Lorenzens noticed this pattern, pioneering researcher Raymond Fowler discovered the same thing. “During the month of April 1966,” writes Fowler, “I received a total of twenty-two reports that were evaluated as being in the ‘unknown’ category. Six of these involved UFOs hovering over or around school buildings.”
Also in 1966, researcher John Keel was investigating and documenting a wave of sightings and unexplained events in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Like the Lorenzens and Fowler, Keel noticed that a large number of his cases involved schools. After investigating the case of a landed UFO, he wrote, “I was perturbed to find that it was right next to the Duncan Falls Elementary School. An unusual number of sightings and Fortean events seem to be concentrated around schools, and the largest percentage of witnesses consists of children between the ages of seven and eighteen.”
Other researchers have noticed this pattern. On February 16, 2018, researcher Shannon Quinn wrote, “There are countless sightings all over the world, but some of the most compelling stories come from not just one person, but an entire group of people who witnessed a strange phenomenon together. For whatever reason, schools have become a common place for UFO sightings to occur. True believers think that young schoolchildren are less threatening to aliens, so it makes them easier to approach with their messages from beyond our galaxy.”
Researcher Marcus Lowth, after investigating the Crestview Elementary School case in Opa-locka, discovered a long history of schoolyard encounters and writes, “UFO sightings witnessed over schools by multiple students is not quite as rare as one might think.”
When I first began my UFO investigations in 1986, it wasn’t long before I uncovered cases involving humanoids. I will always remember my first humanoid case. It came from “Melinda,” who was within my circle of family, friends and co-workers. I had been asking everyone I knew about this subject. And here comes Melinda, someone I love and trust implicitly, describing an encounter with two gray aliens. While that wasn’t astounding enough, it was the location of the encounter that really grabbed my attention. It occurred directly in the front courtyard of the Stagg Street Elementary School in Van Nuys, California. Right there on a public street, in a crowded suburb! It seemed a very unlikely place for aliens to be. Why in front of the school?
As I continued my research, I began to hear about other cases at schools. At first, I didn’t think much of it. After all, UFOs are seen everywhere all over the planet. Why not schools?
But it kept happening, most often to students in elementary schools.
Then, in 1994, a group of schoolchildren at Ariel Elementary School in Ruwa, Zimbabwe experienced a remarkable UFO encounter. Once again, my attention was caught by the location: another elementary school.
Still, I didn’t quite connect the dots.
In 1999, after speaking for a local UFO group, I was contacted by Mike Evans who wanted to write a book about his experiences. Long story short, we collaborated together, and the results were published in, The Coronado Island UFO Incident, which recounted Mike’s participation in a multiple-witness UFO abduction case on March 26, 1994 at the Village Inn on Coronado Island, San Diego, California.
Like many UFO abductees, Mike had experienced a lifetime of contact. I was amazed to hear him report a childhood incident which occurred on the playground at a parochial school in Hawthorne, California. “I have this scoop mark on my leg,” Mike told me. “One day (mid-1960s approx.,) I came out to have lunch, play around and all that stuff. The next thing I know, it’s about one o’clock in the afternoon, and I’m standing over by the fence, and I’m crying. And I go to see the nurse, and the nurse says, ‘Oh, you look like you had a boil.’…I don’t remember, but I always thought it was a boil, but I asked my mother, did I ever have a boil?’”
“You never had a boil in all your life,” she said.
“But I have this great big scar,” says Mike, “right here on my side.” Exactly where he remembered the boil. As he told me this, I remember thinking, hmmm…another schoolyard encounter.
Then in 2016, I began to put out a series of books about the more unusual aspects of UFO encounters. The Not from Here series has three volumes, each with ten chapters focusing on outlying cases, the kind that don’t fit the standard model of UFO contact.
In each of these books, I presented cases of “UFO attractors.” These are locations that attract UFO encounters in a manner that is disproportionally large compared to other areas. Some of these include mines, graveyards, rocket launches, prisons and more.
And as I began to think about the idea of “UFO attractors,” I wondered if schools might fit under this category. At first, I didn’t think so. I knew of only a few scattered cases.
I was intrigued enough to dig a little deeper, and that’s when I got an incredible shock. There weren’t just a few cases. There were a lot. And as I began to study the cases, a sense of wonder and awe swept over me. I hadn’t heard of the Opa-locka, Florida case. Or the Brook Haven, Wales case. And there were so many others.
Then I read an obscure account about a boy who had a visitation by grays while in the classroom at school. He said he was in his classroom when time seemed to stop. Nobody in the class was moving. Suddenly gray ETs entered the classroom. Everyone in the class was paralyzed and oblivious to the presence of the grays. The witness was also paralyzed, but he remained aware. He watched the grays walk up and down the aisles between the desks. The next thing he knew, time suddenly began, the grays were gone, and the classroom session went on like normal, as if nothing strange had happened.
It was this account (which I have since been unable to locate) that ultimately inspired me to write a book about schoolyard UFO encounters.
As I compiled and analyzed the cases, one very important fact became quickly apparent: these were not normal UFO encounters. In fact, there was something very special about them.
The most common type of UFO encounter is seeing an anomalous light dart by at high altitude in the night sky. Sightings are typically brief and involve no apparent interaction between the UFO and the witnesses. It’s a simple fly-over of a glowing light.
Schoolyard encounters, however, are different from the average encounter in several fundamental and profound ways.
First, almost all of them occur during the day. Compared to nighttime sightings, daylight sightings are relatively rare, so this is an important distinction and reduces the possibilities of misperception.
Secondly, these are not simple fly-overs. In these cases, the UFOs are targeting schools directly, appearing from a distance, and then approaching the schools and hovering.
Thirdly, almost without exception, schoolyard UFO encounters involve very low-level sightings of solid, metallic objects. Most “regular” UFO sightings are of anomalous lights several thousand feet high in the sky. Schoolyard sightings, however, typically involve objects that are at most a few thousand in altitude, in most cases, a few hundred feet or less, in some cases much less.
There’s more. While most UFO sightings are brief, enduring a few seconds or minutes, schoolyard sightings are not brief. Instead they last many minutes, hours, and in a few cases take place over a series of days.
Most amazing, however, is that schoolyard encounters often progress beyond a mere sighting. With UFO encounters in general, landings are very rare, and yet when it comes to schoolyard encounters, they are fairly numerous. A surprisingly large number involve humanoids.
It doesn’t stop there. The average UFO sighting has one to five witnesses. Schoolyard encounters typically involve very large groups of people. For a schoolyard encounter, a dozen witnesses is a small amount. Most cases involve scores of witnesses, fifty, a hundred, two hundred or more.
Also unusual is that most of these witnesses are children, often very young children. In fact, half of the cases involve children of elementary school age. This raises the question, how reliable are children as UFO witnesses? One might argue that the innocence of the witnesses, the unpolluted nature of their young minds, their lack of preconceptions, makes them ideal witnesses. Or one might argue that children are notoriously imaginative, create invisible playmates, and have a blurred sense of what is real and what isn’t.
Unfortunately for the skeptics, the second theory doesn’t hold water. There are simply too many witnesses who corroborate each other’s stories. And the fact is, half of the cases involve middle school and high school students and young adults in college.
And if that’s not enough, in addition to the children, there are the teachers. Most schoolyard encounters involve adult witnesses, highly educated individuals, who confirm the testimonies of their students.
In addition to all of these incredible aspects of schoolyard encounters is the fact that many of them provoke a response from government and military authorities, who often initiate an investigation or even attempt to cover-up the events.
Finally, there is frequently a wave of publicity following the encounters. Despite attempts at cover-ups, it isn’t unusual for the media to hear about schoolyard UFO encounters shortly after they happen. As a result, many of the cases are publicized, making local news headlines, or sometimes national or international headlines.
As I collected all the schoolyard cases, these same patterns turned up again and again. Not only were schools definitely “UFO attractors,” the encounters themselves exhibited a definite pattern.
Another thing that amazed me was the worldwide distribution of cases. They came from far flung places across the globe. Cases have occurred all across the United States and in Australia, England, France, Spain, Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico and other countries.
The regular frequency of the schoolyard UFO encounters is also a remarkable feature. They’ve been occurring for more than 166 years. Starting since the 1950s, a significant schoolyard UFO encounter has occurred an average of about one or two per year. And of course, they continue to occur.
What is going on here? Why do extraterrestrials express such a profound interest in our children? What exactly is their agenda? How common are these cases? What kind of effect does this have on our children? Should we be worried?
This book is an attempt to answer these questions and more. For example, what happens when a UFO hovers over a group of dozens of children? What happens when a UFO lands next to a school, aliens step out and start talking to the students?
With more than 100 cases, this book contains the largest and most comprehensive collection of schoolyard UFO encounters on record. The cases are organized both chronologically and topically. Part one presents schoolyard UFO sightings. Part two presents the cases involving landings and humanoids. Both well-known and little-known encounters are included. Some are published here for the first time.
The 100 (or more) cases in this book likely represent only the tip of the iceberg. I’m confident that there are many other cases which have gone unreported, or were successfully covered up. However, there are now enough cases on record to show that something very significant is happening here.
Schoolyard UFO encounters are among the most profound, extensive and important of all UFO cases. Children represent the future of our planet. It is they who will be responsible for taking care of it. They will be the ones dealing with the extraterrestrial presence. And it is they who are reporting UFOs landing next to them on the playground.
So, come along on a wondrous journey into the heart of the UFO phenomenon as we explore this unique collection of one of the strangest types of ET contact cases: schoolyard UFO encounters.
PART ONE: SIGHTINGS
The first half of this book presents the schoolyard sightings. All of these cases had the potential to become more than just a sighting, but for whatever reason, they did not. However, this does not diminish the profundity or the importance of what happened. Each of these cases is a true account of a school being directly targeted by apparent extraterrestrials.
And of course, these are not typical sightings. Not only are schools being targeted, the behavior of the UFOs strongly suggests an agenda of publicity, of wanting to be seen. Again, in most cases, the objects descend to a low elevation, coming very close to the witnesses. And again, the cases last significantly longer than the average fly-by.
There are more than seventy schoolyard sightings. And as we shall see, nearly all of them follow a familiar pattern. And yet, each case is unique and provides a clear window into the nature and purpose of UFOs and extraterrestrials. These cases prove that UFOs show a very strong interest in convincing children of their presence.
How exactly are the ETs fulfilling this apparent agenda? A very early case from 1853 provides our first example.
Burritt College
Sometime shortly after sunrise on the morning of June 1, 1853, “numerous” students at Burritt College in Spencer, Tennessee saw something in the sky above the school that they couldn’t explain. There were two glowing objects: one resembled a bright star, the other was much larger. As they watched, the smaller star-like object vanished, and the larger one began to change shape. It first appeared as a globe, but then started to elongate. Then suddenly, the first smaller light re-appeared and grew rapidly in size. At the same time, the larger object shrank down.
For the next thirty minutes, the two objects took turns alternately expanding and shrinking. Finally, they disappeared. The students told the faculty what happened. Professor A.C. Carnes wondered if the phenomenon might be caused by “atmospheric moisture.” However, at the insistence of the students, he decided to write a letter to Scientific American about their observation.
In the letter, A.C. Carnes writes, “The students have asked for an explanation, but neither the President nor Professors are satisfied as to the character of the light.”
At the time of this sighting, the idea of extraterrestrials visiting our planet was not well known. Most sightings were attributed to astronomical phenomenon. The Burritt College sighting was apparently never solved, and it represents the first recorded schoolyard UFO encounter. The thirty-minute encounter involving an apparent display fits the standard pattern of the typical schoolyard encounter. But it’s an early case, and one of the least dramatic. Most of the cases are considerably more extensive.
Prestonburg Elementary School
An early and particularly dramatic schoolyard encounter took place on March 15, 1950 at Prestonburg Elementary School in Prestonburg, Kentucky.
It was shortly before 1:00 p.m., and all the children were out on the schoolgrounds for their hour break. There were thirty-five students and one teacher, Mrs. Alpharetta Kendrick Holbrook. Many of the students were playing a game of horseshoes. The others were enjoying various other activities.
Suddenly, said Holbrook, there was a “terrible deafening roar” coming from overhead. Everybody stopped what they were doing and looked up to see three strange objects approaching the school.
The children scattered, screaming in terror. One little girl became violently ill. Several of them, Holbrook said, were convinced that the world was ending. “We were all pop-eyed with amazement,” she said.
The three objects slowed down as they approached. Then one of the objects crossed over the first two and moved behind them. A strange mist enveloped them. Then, without warning, all three objects accelerated and shot off into the sky.
Holbrook gathered all the children, calmed them down and ushered them back into the school. She tried to resume teaching, but the children were too excited to learn. Almost an hour later, she was still trying to calm them down when there was another terrifying roaring sound. The UFOs were back.
Holbrook and her class rushed outside and saw two objects approaching at very high speed. They suddenly slowed down and two more objects dropped down out of the sky, slowed down and joined the other two.
The four objects moved at a slow pace over the school at a very low altitude, and were close and low enough for Holbrook and her thirty-one students to “study the objects in awe.”
Holbrook and her students all agree that the objects were not planes or helicopter. They had no wings, tail or other protrusions. They were silver and appeared to be disc-shaped or star-shaped. The objects roared loud enough to shake everything around them. They moved slowly for a short distance before suddenly taking off at an “unbelievable speed” and disappearing into the sky.
Holbrook reported the encounter and her account appeared in the Floyd County Times under the headline, “These Flying Saucers Are Something of a Bother.” The Prestonburg school encounter is one of the first to receive publicity. Following this, many other cases also made the newspapers.
A curious pattern to schoolyard encounters is that one case is often quickly followed by another. The Prestonburg encounter occurred on March, 15, 1950. Two weeks later, and almost 1000 miles away, another schoolyard encounter occurred.
As reported in the Minneapolis, Minnesota Star Tribune, “On June 1, 1950, something resembling a gigantic pocket mirror hovered over nearby Ponsford most of the morning -- not over a liquor store as one might presume, but over the Pine Point School, being seen by a Becker County commissioner, five teachers, and the entire student body of 150.”
A few months later, on a clear afternoon in October 1950, there was another dramatic encounter. “Darryl” was in his fifth-grade class in Emporium, Illinois when his entire class, and the teacher saw a “round silver object with a dome just outside the second story window.”
The object was metallic with a dull silver finish. It had no windows or visible openings, and was completely silent. Nobody had any idea what the object could be. “None of us had heard of the term UFO,” Darryl says. Although none of the students were frightened, the teacher was alarmed and called for the principal. The principal came in and also viewed the object.
They all watched the object for about ten minutes when it suddenly “accelerated at extreme speed over the mountains behind our school.” Years later, Darryl contacted two other students and the teacher. Each of them remembered the incident.
Irving Elementary School
It was April or May in 1951 (approx.) and Stan Hamilton (age 8) was at Irving Elementary School in Irving, Kansas. It was a small town (now non-existent) located about four miles southeast of Blue Rapids, in the northern section of the Blue Valley.
“It was a beautiful spring day, not a cloud in the sky,” says Stan. The noon hour arrived and the students ate their lunches quickly so they could spend time on the playground.
“We had just finished eating our lunch,” Stan says. “As we were getting ready to play, I happened to notice a small, beautiful, silver, disc-shaped saucer hovering in the blue sky. As I continued looking at it, I was amazed to see that the object wasn’t moving and was able to continue hovering in one spot. It was far enough away from us that, to me, it didn’t seem like any kind of threat, or intimidating, but I did have the distinct feeling that it was just observing us children at school.
“I pointed this object out to the other kids, who were also amazed at it, wondering what it could be. We had never heard the term, UFO, and had never thought of things like that.”
Stan was amazed. He knew that one of the teachers should be on the playground. “I approached the teacher,” he says, “and pointed in the area of the sky were the object was.”
Meanwhile, Stan returned to continue playing. “We kids, after watching it for several minutes, got bored watching it and continued to the playground equipment. While we were playing on the swings, I noticed that the teacher I had informed about the UFO was now talking and pointing out the silver disc to another teacher. Both now seemed to be acting quite concerned and nervous, which confused me as I didn’t understand why they would get upset. I had just assumed that the flying object was something our country had developed, as it never occurred to me that it could be from another world. When the bell rang and we had to return to the classroom, I looked back to that section of the sky to see if it was still there, and it was gone.
“We kids discussed the mysterious object for the next several days, never figuring out what it was.”
Fifty-five years later, Stan Hamilton still remembers the event vividly and decided to report his sighting to the Mutual UFO Network, (MUFON) writing, “The recounting of this experience is the truth to the best of my memory.”
Elder Park Primary School
It was 4:00 p.m., on a summer day in 1952. The school day had just ended and Joan Torrence and her friends had just departed Elder Park Primary School in Glasgow, Scotland.
Joan was crossing the playground when she noticed a dark shadow sweeping over the school. She and a large crowd of students looked up in shock. A huge object shaped like a sombrero was hovering about 100 feet high, directly over the school steeple. The object was slightly tilted and appeared to be rotating.
Joan was entranced. “Time seemed to stand still,” she said. She and the other students watched it for an undetermined amount of time. Standing directly behind Joan was a teacher and the school janitor, both who also observed the object.
Finally, the object made a loud whining sound and shot off over the city of Glasgow where numerous other witnesses also observed it.
The next day, the story was published in several newspapers. Some of the parents who had not believed their children now realized that their children had apparently seen a genuine UFO.
The Modern Age of UFOs had begun only five years earlier, in 1947. There is a surprising lack of schoolyard encounters prior to the 1950s. The Elder Park sighting is was one of the earlier modern schoolyard encounters on record. However, it wouldn’t be long before others occurred.
East Burlington Public Middle School
It was a clear summer afternoon in July 1953, and 13-year-old Donald McAlpine was on the playground of East Burlington Public Middle School in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. He and his fellow schoolmates were playing baseball. “I was fielding a fly ball when I noticed the object,” McAlpine says.
The “object” was oval in shape, thick in the center and thin around the edges. And it was hovering very close by. “From the angle of observation, it hovered over a large Elm tree at the rear of the schoolgrounds,” McAlpine said. “It was stationary for a number of minutes, enabling me to draw attention of a number of my classmates to it. It was dull in appearance...silver in color, and certainly brighter than the background of the sky…when it was closest to us, the perimeter was distinctly defined…there was no noise…
“It then moved toward us, slowly at first, and then faster as it made a long graceful curve upward over the school, reflecting light during this maneuver. It accelerated quite rapidly straight up until it disappeared from sight.”
McAlpine is convinced that he saw something not of this world. “It certainly moved faster than any aircraft that I had seen, and there were no aircraft in the area either before or afterward,” he said.
Thirteen years later, at age 26, McAlpine still recalled the event vividly and was inspired to report his sighting to the National Investigative Committee of Aerial Phenomena (NICAP.) Investigators came away with the impression that the object was “spying on school kids.”
HERE ARE A FEW MORE CASES:
Sacred Heart Elementary School
At 1:30 p.m., on March 9, 1967, patrol officer William Fisher was on his beat at the Sacred Heart Elementary School in Moline, Illinois. Fisher performed daily school traffic duty there.
He was in the schoolyard and looking up, saw an extremely brilliant object, shaped like a football, approaching the school. He estimated that it was about thirty or forty feet long, 3000-4000 feet high and one a half miles away.
On the playground were more than forty students and two nuns, who also observed the object. At the same time, two cars driving alongside the school pulled over, and the drivers were watching the strange display.
The object made no sound, and after moving toward the school, started to move away to the northwest and become thinner in shape and less brilliant. At one point, it appeared to take on the shape of a “box-car.”
Fisher’s son, William Jr., was a student at the school, and remembers the day his father showed him the UFO. “He pointed up and the sky and said, ‘Hey, look at that plane, it’s just hanging there.’ I looked up, and there’s a big oblong shape just hanging there. There were no wings. It was oblong, and really shining, and hanging. It was silvery white, just reflecting sunlight. As soon as I looked up and saw it, my jaw dropped, wondering what it was.”
Realizing they were all viewing something unexplained, Fisher retrieved his 8mm movie camera (which he uses on his job), and pointed it at the object. He filmed it for about twenty seconds as it moved off into the distance and disappeared.
After viewing the film, Fisher saw that he had managed to record a clear image of the strange craft. He first called the weather bureau and learned that the winds on that day were about 40-45 mph from the WNW, a completely different direction than the course the object had taken.
Fisher got in touch with Dr. Allen Utke, Professor of Chemistry at Wisconsin State University (and also an investigator for APRO.) Dr. Utke investigated the incident. He tried to interview one of the nuns, Sister Mary Mark, but she was reluctant to speak about it. He was convinced, however, that patrol officer William Fisher was sincere and telling the truth about what he observed.
The next day following the sighting, two USAF captains arrived and expressed a strong interest in what he had seen, questioning him extensively.
Fisher says he was also visited at the police station by three mysterious individuals dressed in black suits, who cornered him and interrogated him about the sighting. At the time, there had been a wave of sightings in the area. “They were being viewed by a lot of people,” Fisher said. “There were stories all around. I was just naturally curious.”
Richmond School
May 17, 1970, started out as any other day for headmaster W. Billing. He was in charge of the Richmond School in Maraenui, New Zealand.
Mr. A. Coveny, a teacher at the school also recalls that the day was “beautifully warm and sunny.”
It was around 2:00 p.m., and Billing was outside on the playground with about 400 other students and some teachers. Suddenly Billing realized something was wrong: the sound of the children playing had gone completely silent. Looking around him, he saw that all the children had stopped their activities and were instead staring at the sky in awe and fascination.
Mr. Coveny looked up in the sky where the children were gazing, and could hardly believe his eyes. It looked as though an opaque “hole” had appeared low in the south sky. As he watched, it became oval and elongated. Then it began to “gather itself together” and move toward the school. As it approached more closely, the object now appeared to be a “huge wingless plane” glistening in the afternoon sun.
The strange object remained hovering for about ten minutes. It then took on the appearance of a round ball with a “transparent-like sheen” and began to move to the northeast.
Next it became flattened out and took on the appearance of an unusually brilliant blue star. Finally, it faded slightly, then shot upward at high speed.
Headmaster Billing was impressed. It was clearly not a balloon, and instead appeared to be solid and metallic. “I thought it was an aircraft at first,” he said. “Then I realized it had stopped moving and it appeared as an extremely brilliant object in the clear sky…The whole area seemed to be so unnaturally quiet that it was uncanny.”
Mr. Coveny was shocked that the entire town hadn’t seen it. “Here at the school,” he said, “everyone stood with their mouths open trying to work out a logical explanation.”
During the incident, a pupil came up to him and asked, “Is it a flying saucer?”
“Yes,” Coveny replied. He later told investigators that he could find no other explanation for what he and 400 other students were seeing. Prior to the incident, he had been skeptical of UFOs. Now, he felt certain that they existed. He said the object covered a huge portion of the sky -- like a basketball held at arm’s length. Its shape seemed to continually change from oval to round. During the incident, the witnesses all observed a plane land at the Napier Airdrome not far from the school. “There was definitely no comparison between the two,” Billing told investigators.
Whatever the object was, Coveny was convinced they were seeing “something out of this worldly concept -- something from another dimension.”
The case was investigated by Norman Alford, APRO’s representative for New Zealand. After interviewing the witnesses, Alford contacted the National Airways Corporation and the control towers of the Napier Airdrome. Neither were able to provide any information the incident, and denied seeing anything strange.
The incident not only remains unexplained, it is one of the most widely-viewed schoolyard UFO sightings on record.
Johnstown Elementary School
Many school UFO encounters are not well-known, such as what occurred at Johnstown Elementary School in Johnstown, New York. As reported by Jim Bouck, Assistant State Director of MUFON, New York, at around 2:40 p.m., on November 8, 1973, a group of about seventy elementary school students and one teacher saw something strange drop out of the sky and come in for a landing on the playground.
They described it as a gray-white object, shaped like an Apollo capsule with extended legs with round pads at the bottom. The witnesses were about 200 feet away when the object descended silently to the ground as if to land. Just before it landed, the craft emitted a big puff of fire and suddenly took off in a halo of luminosity, and disappeared. The account appeared in the Schenectady Gazette in New York, and the Marlin Daily Democrat in Texas.
This case shows how fine the line is between a UFO sighting and a landing. And with so many witnesses seeing a metallic object at such close-range during daylight hours -- it once again displays the typical pattern of schoolyard encounters.
100 True Accounts
Preston Dennett
CONTENTS
Introduction…6
PART ONE: SIGHTINGS…15
Burritt College…16
Prestonburg Elementary School…17
Irving Elementary School…19
Elder Park Primary School…21
East Burlington Public Middle School…22
Ecole Les Rousses…23
Jerome Elementary School…24
A School in Nashville, Tennessee…28
Whitsett Elementary School…29
Eleven Schoolyard Encounters…32
Xiaoping Primary School…37
Rickmansworth Grammar School…39
Fleetwood Elementary School…41
Bishopbriggs School…43
Omak Elementary School…45
Huanchuan County Middle School #8…46
Markleville Elementary School…47
Lowell Elementary School…48
Beverly High School & Gordon College…51
Hotchkiss High School…56
Sacred Heart Elementary School…58
Spring Creek Elementary School…60
Viedma University…62
Union High School…63
Alexander Elementary School…64
Public Elementary School #54…65
Richmond School…67
Foxcroft Boarding School…69
Banchory Primary School…70
Normandie Avenue Elementary School…72
Our Lady of Mercy Elementary School…73
Johnstown Elementary School…74
Western Carolina University…76
Andrew Louw Primary School…77
Xi’an City Middle School #3…79
Eastbourne Boarding School…80
Steeple Ashton Elementary School…82
Rhosybol Elementary School…83
Downey Elementary School…86
Elmont Elementary School…88
Maplewood Elementary School…89
Upton Primary School…90
Florence Elementary School…92
Wuhan University…93
St. Mark’s Primary School…95
North Carolina School for the Deaf…96
Adams Middle School…98
Vendome Boarding School…100
Fairless Hills School…101
Cloverdale Elementary School…102
A School in Iron Mountain, Michigan…103
McDonough Elementary School…105
Milton Elementary School…106
Clayton High School…108
Rockville High School…109
Texas School Bus Encounter…111
West Nussa School…112
PART TWO: LANDINGS AND HUMANOIDS…113
Kelso School…114
St. Joseph Elementary School…116
A School in Altus, Oklahoma…117
Bedonwell Primary School…118
Evansville High School…121
Conard High School…122
An Elementary School in Mentor, Ohio…125
Deer Creek Middle School…127
Point Pleasant School…128
Point Elementary School…129
Hillsdale College…133
Westall High School…136
Duncan Falls Elementary School…148
Crestview Elementary School…149
Peebles Elementary School…155
Patrick Henry Junior High School…157
Westmoreland High School…158
Villafranca de los Barros Jesuit College…159
Nathaniel Hawthorne College…160
Stowell Elementary School…162
A High School in Missouri…163
Fort Stockton Elementary and Junior High School…168
Rosemead High School…172
Lewisburg High School…174
A High School in Atlanta, Georgia…175
Lautoka Methodist Mission School…177
Falls Elementary School…178
Whitehorse School…180
Broad Haven Elementary School…182
Ocean Knoll Elementary School…186
Montvale Memorial Elementary School…189
Loreto School…192
Campbell College…194
Hainault School…195
Passo Tempo School…196
Stagg Street Elementary School…197
Tierra y Libertad Primary School…201
Roosevelt Elementary School…202
Ariel Elementary School…204
Adikiram Primary School…213
Conclusions…216
Sources…220
About the Author…231
Books by Preston Dennett…232
Introduction
When I first began investigating UFOs in 1986 -- after discovering that my friends, family and co-workers were having dramatic UFO encounters -- I had no idea what I was getting into. I would never have guessed that more than thirty years later, I would still be investigating UFOs, writing books, speaking at conferences, and appearing on radio and television. Of course, back then I didn’t know how much evidence there was that UFOs and extraterrestrials are visiting our planet. I was actually a late-comer to the field. Many people had been studying this subject for a very long time. There were mountains of evidence. The proof that aliens are here was already in the public arena, enough evidence, I think, to convince any skeptic willing to objectively examine it. I couldn’t understand why this subject wasn’t being taken more seriously, why it wasn’t being taught in schools, why it wasn’t front page news.
I soon learned, however, that things weren’t quite that simple. As I delved deeper into UFO research, I found myself embroiled in a subject that was fraught with controversy. There was an active and ruthless cover-up by the U.S. government, and other governments, and a policy to ridicule, deny and lie about a subject that highly-placed officials knew was real. There were professional debunkers whose goal was to attack not only the subject, but those who researched it. There were government disinformation agents paid with our own tax dollars to introduce false data with the expressed purpose of hindering the progress of UFO research.
And it didn’t stop there. The subject attracted greedy hoaxers who only wanted to make money, or fool people. It attracted cult-like fringe groups. The entire subject was scoffed at by much of the mainstream scientific community which seemed unwilling to even examine the evidence.
But most importantly, it involved many thousands (or more likely millions) of people who had seen UFOs or extraterrestrials -- people who had been taken onboard a craft. After wading through all the other stuff, it was this area which continued to draw my interest, and also the area I focused my research -- on people who have actually had UFO experiences. I found many such people within my own circle of family, friends and co-workers. I soon learned that there were many more beyond that. It became clear that there were a lot of people having UFO experiences.
Although I have devoted more than thirty years of my life to researching this subject, I am still uncovering cases that fill me with awe and wonder.
Which brings us to the subject of this book: schoolyard UFO encounters.
In 2016, Dr. Roger Stankovic, the National Director of MUFON Australia posed a question on Facebook that few have asked. Writes Stankovic:
“Aliens on the playground?
“Over the past fifty years UFOs have appeared in broad daylight sporadically at various schoolgrounds over four continents around the world.
“Listing the top four sightings we have:
“1. Westall High School, Victoria, Australia. 11:00 a.m., April 6, 1966. Two hundred or more witnesses including teachers and students.
“2. Broad Haven Primary School, Haverfordwest, South Wales. About 1:30 p.m., February 4, 1977. Fourteen witnesses being of primary school age witnessed a silver cigar-shaped object.
“3. Crestview Elementary School, Opa-locka, Florida, USA. 10:00 a.m., April 7, 1967. Approximately 200 elementary age schoolchildren and teachers Bob Apfel, Virginia Martin and Marian Waters witnessed an oval or cigar-shaped UFO. Moreover, an independent witness, Mrs. Mary Troesser, also said she witnessed the same UFO from her backyard in the direction of the Crestwood Elementary School.
“4. Ariel School, Ruwa, Zimbabwe, Africa. 10:15 a.m., September 16, 1994. Sixty-two primary school-aged witnesses saw two hovering UFOs and the presence of two entities that came out of the vehicles.
“What purpose do UFOs have in appearing at schoolgrounds? Why did they appear when students are likely to be having recess or lunch?”
These are all great questions. And Stankovic is not the first to ask them.
To Stankovic’s list, I would also add one more well-known encounter: Hillsdale College, Hillsdale Michigan. 10:30 p.m., March 21, 1966. Eighty-seven students, school administrators and police observed a glowing object which hovered, darted around and landed next to the school.
Following the Hillsdale sightings, pioneering researchers Coral and Jim Lorenzen (the founders of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, APRO) realized that UFOs were strangely attracted to schools. They also had a theory as to why. In March 1966, with no knowledge of the Westall High School encounter about to occur two weeks later, Coral Lorenzen wrote, “We have mentioned previously that an outstanding number of sightings of UFOs have been made in the vicinity of or over schoolyards. If the appearance of the objects over cities for long periods of time and repeatedly during the last year indicates an attempt at indoctrination, it may be that a peaceful contact may be attempted, and that schools are being overflown and the craft are exhibiting themselves there for a very good reason: Children are definitely less subject to dogmatic or pre-conceived notions than adults. Perhaps the visitors hope that exhibitions over schools will influence the population to some extent.”
At the same exact time that the Lorenzens noticed this pattern, pioneering researcher Raymond Fowler discovered the same thing. “During the month of April 1966,” writes Fowler, “I received a total of twenty-two reports that were evaluated as being in the ‘unknown’ category. Six of these involved UFOs hovering over or around school buildings.”
Also in 1966, researcher John Keel was investigating and documenting a wave of sightings and unexplained events in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Like the Lorenzens and Fowler, Keel noticed that a large number of his cases involved schools. After investigating the case of a landed UFO, he wrote, “I was perturbed to find that it was right next to the Duncan Falls Elementary School. An unusual number of sightings and Fortean events seem to be concentrated around schools, and the largest percentage of witnesses consists of children between the ages of seven and eighteen.”
Other researchers have noticed this pattern. On February 16, 2018, researcher Shannon Quinn wrote, “There are countless sightings all over the world, but some of the most compelling stories come from not just one person, but an entire group of people who witnessed a strange phenomenon together. For whatever reason, schools have become a common place for UFO sightings to occur. True believers think that young schoolchildren are less threatening to aliens, so it makes them easier to approach with their messages from beyond our galaxy.”
Researcher Marcus Lowth, after investigating the Crestview Elementary School case in Opa-locka, discovered a long history of schoolyard encounters and writes, “UFO sightings witnessed over schools by multiple students is not quite as rare as one might think.”
When I first began my UFO investigations in 1986, it wasn’t long before I uncovered cases involving humanoids. I will always remember my first humanoid case. It came from “Melinda,” who was within my circle of family, friends and co-workers. I had been asking everyone I knew about this subject. And here comes Melinda, someone I love and trust implicitly, describing an encounter with two gray aliens. While that wasn’t astounding enough, it was the location of the encounter that really grabbed my attention. It occurred directly in the front courtyard of the Stagg Street Elementary School in Van Nuys, California. Right there on a public street, in a crowded suburb! It seemed a very unlikely place for aliens to be. Why in front of the school?
As I continued my research, I began to hear about other cases at schools. At first, I didn’t think much of it. After all, UFOs are seen everywhere all over the planet. Why not schools?
But it kept happening, most often to students in elementary schools.
Then, in 1994, a group of schoolchildren at Ariel Elementary School in Ruwa, Zimbabwe experienced a remarkable UFO encounter. Once again, my attention was caught by the location: another elementary school.
Still, I didn’t quite connect the dots.
In 1999, after speaking for a local UFO group, I was contacted by Mike Evans who wanted to write a book about his experiences. Long story short, we collaborated together, and the results were published in, The Coronado Island UFO Incident, which recounted Mike’s participation in a multiple-witness UFO abduction case on March 26, 1994 at the Village Inn on Coronado Island, San Diego, California.
Like many UFO abductees, Mike had experienced a lifetime of contact. I was amazed to hear him report a childhood incident which occurred on the playground at a parochial school in Hawthorne, California. “I have this scoop mark on my leg,” Mike told me. “One day (mid-1960s approx.,) I came out to have lunch, play around and all that stuff. The next thing I know, it’s about one o’clock in the afternoon, and I’m standing over by the fence, and I’m crying. And I go to see the nurse, and the nurse says, ‘Oh, you look like you had a boil.’…I don’t remember, but I always thought it was a boil, but I asked my mother, did I ever have a boil?’”
“You never had a boil in all your life,” she said.
“But I have this great big scar,” says Mike, “right here on my side.” Exactly where he remembered the boil. As he told me this, I remember thinking, hmmm…another schoolyard encounter.
Then in 2016, I began to put out a series of books about the more unusual aspects of UFO encounters. The Not from Here series has three volumes, each with ten chapters focusing on outlying cases, the kind that don’t fit the standard model of UFO contact.
In each of these books, I presented cases of “UFO attractors.” These are locations that attract UFO encounters in a manner that is disproportionally large compared to other areas. Some of these include mines, graveyards, rocket launches, prisons and more.
And as I began to think about the idea of “UFO attractors,” I wondered if schools might fit under this category. At first, I didn’t think so. I knew of only a few scattered cases.
I was intrigued enough to dig a little deeper, and that’s when I got an incredible shock. There weren’t just a few cases. There were a lot. And as I began to study the cases, a sense of wonder and awe swept over me. I hadn’t heard of the Opa-locka, Florida case. Or the Brook Haven, Wales case. And there were so many others.
Then I read an obscure account about a boy who had a visitation by grays while in the classroom at school. He said he was in his classroom when time seemed to stop. Nobody in the class was moving. Suddenly gray ETs entered the classroom. Everyone in the class was paralyzed and oblivious to the presence of the grays. The witness was also paralyzed, but he remained aware. He watched the grays walk up and down the aisles between the desks. The next thing he knew, time suddenly began, the grays were gone, and the classroom session went on like normal, as if nothing strange had happened.
It was this account (which I have since been unable to locate) that ultimately inspired me to write a book about schoolyard UFO encounters.
As I compiled and analyzed the cases, one very important fact became quickly apparent: these were not normal UFO encounters. In fact, there was something very special about them.
The most common type of UFO encounter is seeing an anomalous light dart by at high altitude in the night sky. Sightings are typically brief and involve no apparent interaction between the UFO and the witnesses. It’s a simple fly-over of a glowing light.
Schoolyard encounters, however, are different from the average encounter in several fundamental and profound ways.
First, almost all of them occur during the day. Compared to nighttime sightings, daylight sightings are relatively rare, so this is an important distinction and reduces the possibilities of misperception.
Secondly, these are not simple fly-overs. In these cases, the UFOs are targeting schools directly, appearing from a distance, and then approaching the schools and hovering.
Thirdly, almost without exception, schoolyard UFO encounters involve very low-level sightings of solid, metallic objects. Most “regular” UFO sightings are of anomalous lights several thousand feet high in the sky. Schoolyard sightings, however, typically involve objects that are at most a few thousand in altitude, in most cases, a few hundred feet or less, in some cases much less.
There’s more. While most UFO sightings are brief, enduring a few seconds or minutes, schoolyard sightings are not brief. Instead they last many minutes, hours, and in a few cases take place over a series of days.
Most amazing, however, is that schoolyard encounters often progress beyond a mere sighting. With UFO encounters in general, landings are very rare, and yet when it comes to schoolyard encounters, they are fairly numerous. A surprisingly large number involve humanoids.
It doesn’t stop there. The average UFO sighting has one to five witnesses. Schoolyard encounters typically involve very large groups of people. For a schoolyard encounter, a dozen witnesses is a small amount. Most cases involve scores of witnesses, fifty, a hundred, two hundred or more.
Also unusual is that most of these witnesses are children, often very young children. In fact, half of the cases involve children of elementary school age. This raises the question, how reliable are children as UFO witnesses? One might argue that the innocence of the witnesses, the unpolluted nature of their young minds, their lack of preconceptions, makes them ideal witnesses. Or one might argue that children are notoriously imaginative, create invisible playmates, and have a blurred sense of what is real and what isn’t.
Unfortunately for the skeptics, the second theory doesn’t hold water. There are simply too many witnesses who corroborate each other’s stories. And the fact is, half of the cases involve middle school and high school students and young adults in college.
And if that’s not enough, in addition to the children, there are the teachers. Most schoolyard encounters involve adult witnesses, highly educated individuals, who confirm the testimonies of their students.
In addition to all of these incredible aspects of schoolyard encounters is the fact that many of them provoke a response from government and military authorities, who often initiate an investigation or even attempt to cover-up the events.
Finally, there is frequently a wave of publicity following the encounters. Despite attempts at cover-ups, it isn’t unusual for the media to hear about schoolyard UFO encounters shortly after they happen. As a result, many of the cases are publicized, making local news headlines, or sometimes national or international headlines.
As I collected all the schoolyard cases, these same patterns turned up again and again. Not only were schools definitely “UFO attractors,” the encounters themselves exhibited a definite pattern.
Another thing that amazed me was the worldwide distribution of cases. They came from far flung places across the globe. Cases have occurred all across the United States and in Australia, England, France, Spain, Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico and other countries.
The regular frequency of the schoolyard UFO encounters is also a remarkable feature. They’ve been occurring for more than 166 years. Starting since the 1950s, a significant schoolyard UFO encounter has occurred an average of about one or two per year. And of course, they continue to occur.
What is going on here? Why do extraterrestrials express such a profound interest in our children? What exactly is their agenda? How common are these cases? What kind of effect does this have on our children? Should we be worried?
This book is an attempt to answer these questions and more. For example, what happens when a UFO hovers over a group of dozens of children? What happens when a UFO lands next to a school, aliens step out and start talking to the students?
With more than 100 cases, this book contains the largest and most comprehensive collection of schoolyard UFO encounters on record. The cases are organized both chronologically and topically. Part one presents schoolyard UFO sightings. Part two presents the cases involving landings and humanoids. Both well-known and little-known encounters are included. Some are published here for the first time.
The 100 (or more) cases in this book likely represent only the tip of the iceberg. I’m confident that there are many other cases which have gone unreported, or were successfully covered up. However, there are now enough cases on record to show that something very significant is happening here.
Schoolyard UFO encounters are among the most profound, extensive and important of all UFO cases. Children represent the future of our planet. It is they who will be responsible for taking care of it. They will be the ones dealing with the extraterrestrial presence. And it is they who are reporting UFOs landing next to them on the playground.
So, come along on a wondrous journey into the heart of the UFO phenomenon as we explore this unique collection of one of the strangest types of ET contact cases: schoolyard UFO encounters.
PART ONE: SIGHTINGS
The first half of this book presents the schoolyard sightings. All of these cases had the potential to become more than just a sighting, but for whatever reason, they did not. However, this does not diminish the profundity or the importance of what happened. Each of these cases is a true account of a school being directly targeted by apparent extraterrestrials.
And of course, these are not typical sightings. Not only are schools being targeted, the behavior of the UFOs strongly suggests an agenda of publicity, of wanting to be seen. Again, in most cases, the objects descend to a low elevation, coming very close to the witnesses. And again, the cases last significantly longer than the average fly-by.
There are more than seventy schoolyard sightings. And as we shall see, nearly all of them follow a familiar pattern. And yet, each case is unique and provides a clear window into the nature and purpose of UFOs and extraterrestrials. These cases prove that UFOs show a very strong interest in convincing children of their presence.
How exactly are the ETs fulfilling this apparent agenda? A very early case from 1853 provides our first example.
Burritt College
Sometime shortly after sunrise on the morning of June 1, 1853, “numerous” students at Burritt College in Spencer, Tennessee saw something in the sky above the school that they couldn’t explain. There were two glowing objects: one resembled a bright star, the other was much larger. As they watched, the smaller star-like object vanished, and the larger one began to change shape. It first appeared as a globe, but then started to elongate. Then suddenly, the first smaller light re-appeared and grew rapidly in size. At the same time, the larger object shrank down.
For the next thirty minutes, the two objects took turns alternately expanding and shrinking. Finally, they disappeared. The students told the faculty what happened. Professor A.C. Carnes wondered if the phenomenon might be caused by “atmospheric moisture.” However, at the insistence of the students, he decided to write a letter to Scientific American about their observation.
In the letter, A.C. Carnes writes, “The students have asked for an explanation, but neither the President nor Professors are satisfied as to the character of the light.”
At the time of this sighting, the idea of extraterrestrials visiting our planet was not well known. Most sightings were attributed to astronomical phenomenon. The Burritt College sighting was apparently never solved, and it represents the first recorded schoolyard UFO encounter. The thirty-minute encounter involving an apparent display fits the standard pattern of the typical schoolyard encounter. But it’s an early case, and one of the least dramatic. Most of the cases are considerably more extensive.
Prestonburg Elementary School
An early and particularly dramatic schoolyard encounter took place on March 15, 1950 at Prestonburg Elementary School in Prestonburg, Kentucky.
It was shortly before 1:00 p.m., and all the children were out on the schoolgrounds for their hour break. There were thirty-five students and one teacher, Mrs. Alpharetta Kendrick Holbrook. Many of the students were playing a game of horseshoes. The others were enjoying various other activities.
Suddenly, said Holbrook, there was a “terrible deafening roar” coming from overhead. Everybody stopped what they were doing and looked up to see three strange objects approaching the school.
The children scattered, screaming in terror. One little girl became violently ill. Several of them, Holbrook said, were convinced that the world was ending. “We were all pop-eyed with amazement,” she said.
The three objects slowed down as they approached. Then one of the objects crossed over the first two and moved behind them. A strange mist enveloped them. Then, without warning, all three objects accelerated and shot off into the sky.
Holbrook gathered all the children, calmed them down and ushered them back into the school. She tried to resume teaching, but the children were too excited to learn. Almost an hour later, she was still trying to calm them down when there was another terrifying roaring sound. The UFOs were back.
Holbrook and her class rushed outside and saw two objects approaching at very high speed. They suddenly slowed down and two more objects dropped down out of the sky, slowed down and joined the other two.
The four objects moved at a slow pace over the school at a very low altitude, and were close and low enough for Holbrook and her thirty-one students to “study the objects in awe.”
Holbrook and her students all agree that the objects were not planes or helicopter. They had no wings, tail or other protrusions. They were silver and appeared to be disc-shaped or star-shaped. The objects roared loud enough to shake everything around them. They moved slowly for a short distance before suddenly taking off at an “unbelievable speed” and disappearing into the sky.
Holbrook reported the encounter and her account appeared in the Floyd County Times under the headline, “These Flying Saucers Are Something of a Bother.” The Prestonburg school encounter is one of the first to receive publicity. Following this, many other cases also made the newspapers.
A curious pattern to schoolyard encounters is that one case is often quickly followed by another. The Prestonburg encounter occurred on March, 15, 1950. Two weeks later, and almost 1000 miles away, another schoolyard encounter occurred.
As reported in the Minneapolis, Minnesota Star Tribune, “On June 1, 1950, something resembling a gigantic pocket mirror hovered over nearby Ponsford most of the morning -- not over a liquor store as one might presume, but over the Pine Point School, being seen by a Becker County commissioner, five teachers, and the entire student body of 150.”
A few months later, on a clear afternoon in October 1950, there was another dramatic encounter. “Darryl” was in his fifth-grade class in Emporium, Illinois when his entire class, and the teacher saw a “round silver object with a dome just outside the second story window.”
The object was metallic with a dull silver finish. It had no windows or visible openings, and was completely silent. Nobody had any idea what the object could be. “None of us had heard of the term UFO,” Darryl says. Although none of the students were frightened, the teacher was alarmed and called for the principal. The principal came in and also viewed the object.
They all watched the object for about ten minutes when it suddenly “accelerated at extreme speed over the mountains behind our school.” Years later, Darryl contacted two other students and the teacher. Each of them remembered the incident.
Irving Elementary School
It was April or May in 1951 (approx.) and Stan Hamilton (age 8) was at Irving Elementary School in Irving, Kansas. It was a small town (now non-existent) located about four miles southeast of Blue Rapids, in the northern section of the Blue Valley.
“It was a beautiful spring day, not a cloud in the sky,” says Stan. The noon hour arrived and the students ate their lunches quickly so they could spend time on the playground.
“We had just finished eating our lunch,” Stan says. “As we were getting ready to play, I happened to notice a small, beautiful, silver, disc-shaped saucer hovering in the blue sky. As I continued looking at it, I was amazed to see that the object wasn’t moving and was able to continue hovering in one spot. It was far enough away from us that, to me, it didn’t seem like any kind of threat, or intimidating, but I did have the distinct feeling that it was just observing us children at school.
“I pointed this object out to the other kids, who were also amazed at it, wondering what it could be. We had never heard the term, UFO, and had never thought of things like that.”
Stan was amazed. He knew that one of the teachers should be on the playground. “I approached the teacher,” he says, “and pointed in the area of the sky were the object was.”
Meanwhile, Stan returned to continue playing. “We kids, after watching it for several minutes, got bored watching it and continued to the playground equipment. While we were playing on the swings, I noticed that the teacher I had informed about the UFO was now talking and pointing out the silver disc to another teacher. Both now seemed to be acting quite concerned and nervous, which confused me as I didn’t understand why they would get upset. I had just assumed that the flying object was something our country had developed, as it never occurred to me that it could be from another world. When the bell rang and we had to return to the classroom, I looked back to that section of the sky to see if it was still there, and it was gone.
“We kids discussed the mysterious object for the next several days, never figuring out what it was.”
Fifty-five years later, Stan Hamilton still remembers the event vividly and decided to report his sighting to the Mutual UFO Network, (MUFON) writing, “The recounting of this experience is the truth to the best of my memory.”
Elder Park Primary School
It was 4:00 p.m., on a summer day in 1952. The school day had just ended and Joan Torrence and her friends had just departed Elder Park Primary School in Glasgow, Scotland.
Joan was crossing the playground when she noticed a dark shadow sweeping over the school. She and a large crowd of students looked up in shock. A huge object shaped like a sombrero was hovering about 100 feet high, directly over the school steeple. The object was slightly tilted and appeared to be rotating.
Joan was entranced. “Time seemed to stand still,” she said. She and the other students watched it for an undetermined amount of time. Standing directly behind Joan was a teacher and the school janitor, both who also observed the object.
Finally, the object made a loud whining sound and shot off over the city of Glasgow where numerous other witnesses also observed it.
The next day, the story was published in several newspapers. Some of the parents who had not believed their children now realized that their children had apparently seen a genuine UFO.
The Modern Age of UFOs had begun only five years earlier, in 1947. There is a surprising lack of schoolyard encounters prior to the 1950s. The Elder Park sighting is was one of the earlier modern schoolyard encounters on record. However, it wouldn’t be long before others occurred.
East Burlington Public Middle School
It was a clear summer afternoon in July 1953, and 13-year-old Donald McAlpine was on the playground of East Burlington Public Middle School in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. He and his fellow schoolmates were playing baseball. “I was fielding a fly ball when I noticed the object,” McAlpine says.
The “object” was oval in shape, thick in the center and thin around the edges. And it was hovering very close by. “From the angle of observation, it hovered over a large Elm tree at the rear of the schoolgrounds,” McAlpine said. “It was stationary for a number of minutes, enabling me to draw attention of a number of my classmates to it. It was dull in appearance...silver in color, and certainly brighter than the background of the sky…when it was closest to us, the perimeter was distinctly defined…there was no noise…
“It then moved toward us, slowly at first, and then faster as it made a long graceful curve upward over the school, reflecting light during this maneuver. It accelerated quite rapidly straight up until it disappeared from sight.”
McAlpine is convinced that he saw something not of this world. “It certainly moved faster than any aircraft that I had seen, and there were no aircraft in the area either before or afterward,” he said.
Thirteen years later, at age 26, McAlpine still recalled the event vividly and was inspired to report his sighting to the National Investigative Committee of Aerial Phenomena (NICAP.) Investigators came away with the impression that the object was “spying on school kids.”
HERE ARE A FEW MORE CASES:
Sacred Heart Elementary School
At 1:30 p.m., on March 9, 1967, patrol officer William Fisher was on his beat at the Sacred Heart Elementary School in Moline, Illinois. Fisher performed daily school traffic duty there.
He was in the schoolyard and looking up, saw an extremely brilliant object, shaped like a football, approaching the school. He estimated that it was about thirty or forty feet long, 3000-4000 feet high and one a half miles away.
On the playground were more than forty students and two nuns, who also observed the object. At the same time, two cars driving alongside the school pulled over, and the drivers were watching the strange display.
The object made no sound, and after moving toward the school, started to move away to the northwest and become thinner in shape and less brilliant. At one point, it appeared to take on the shape of a “box-car.”
Fisher’s son, William Jr., was a student at the school, and remembers the day his father showed him the UFO. “He pointed up and the sky and said, ‘Hey, look at that plane, it’s just hanging there.’ I looked up, and there’s a big oblong shape just hanging there. There were no wings. It was oblong, and really shining, and hanging. It was silvery white, just reflecting sunlight. As soon as I looked up and saw it, my jaw dropped, wondering what it was.”
Realizing they were all viewing something unexplained, Fisher retrieved his 8mm movie camera (which he uses on his job), and pointed it at the object. He filmed it for about twenty seconds as it moved off into the distance and disappeared.
After viewing the film, Fisher saw that he had managed to record a clear image of the strange craft. He first called the weather bureau and learned that the winds on that day were about 40-45 mph from the WNW, a completely different direction than the course the object had taken.
Fisher got in touch with Dr. Allen Utke, Professor of Chemistry at Wisconsin State University (and also an investigator for APRO.) Dr. Utke investigated the incident. He tried to interview one of the nuns, Sister Mary Mark, but she was reluctant to speak about it. He was convinced, however, that patrol officer William Fisher was sincere and telling the truth about what he observed.
The next day following the sighting, two USAF captains arrived and expressed a strong interest in what he had seen, questioning him extensively.
Fisher says he was also visited at the police station by three mysterious individuals dressed in black suits, who cornered him and interrogated him about the sighting. At the time, there had been a wave of sightings in the area. “They were being viewed by a lot of people,” Fisher said. “There were stories all around. I was just naturally curious.”
Richmond School
May 17, 1970, started out as any other day for headmaster W. Billing. He was in charge of the Richmond School in Maraenui, New Zealand.
Mr. A. Coveny, a teacher at the school also recalls that the day was “beautifully warm and sunny.”
It was around 2:00 p.m., and Billing was outside on the playground with about 400 other students and some teachers. Suddenly Billing realized something was wrong: the sound of the children playing had gone completely silent. Looking around him, he saw that all the children had stopped their activities and were instead staring at the sky in awe and fascination.
Mr. Coveny looked up in the sky where the children were gazing, and could hardly believe his eyes. It looked as though an opaque “hole” had appeared low in the south sky. As he watched, it became oval and elongated. Then it began to “gather itself together” and move toward the school. As it approached more closely, the object now appeared to be a “huge wingless plane” glistening in the afternoon sun.
The strange object remained hovering for about ten minutes. It then took on the appearance of a round ball with a “transparent-like sheen” and began to move to the northeast.
Next it became flattened out and took on the appearance of an unusually brilliant blue star. Finally, it faded slightly, then shot upward at high speed.
Headmaster Billing was impressed. It was clearly not a balloon, and instead appeared to be solid and metallic. “I thought it was an aircraft at first,” he said. “Then I realized it had stopped moving and it appeared as an extremely brilliant object in the clear sky…The whole area seemed to be so unnaturally quiet that it was uncanny.”
Mr. Coveny was shocked that the entire town hadn’t seen it. “Here at the school,” he said, “everyone stood with their mouths open trying to work out a logical explanation.”
During the incident, a pupil came up to him and asked, “Is it a flying saucer?”
“Yes,” Coveny replied. He later told investigators that he could find no other explanation for what he and 400 other students were seeing. Prior to the incident, he had been skeptical of UFOs. Now, he felt certain that they existed. He said the object covered a huge portion of the sky -- like a basketball held at arm’s length. Its shape seemed to continually change from oval to round. During the incident, the witnesses all observed a plane land at the Napier Airdrome not far from the school. “There was definitely no comparison between the two,” Billing told investigators.
Whatever the object was, Coveny was convinced they were seeing “something out of this worldly concept -- something from another dimension.”
The case was investigated by Norman Alford, APRO’s representative for New Zealand. After interviewing the witnesses, Alford contacted the National Airways Corporation and the control towers of the Napier Airdrome. Neither were able to provide any information the incident, and denied seeing anything strange.
The incident not only remains unexplained, it is one of the most widely-viewed schoolyard UFO sightings on record.
Johnstown Elementary School
Many school UFO encounters are not well-known, such as what occurred at Johnstown Elementary School in Johnstown, New York. As reported by Jim Bouck, Assistant State Director of MUFON, New York, at around 2:40 p.m., on November 8, 1973, a group of about seventy elementary school students and one teacher saw something strange drop out of the sky and come in for a landing on the playground.
They described it as a gray-white object, shaped like an Apollo capsule with extended legs with round pads at the bottom. The witnesses were about 200 feet away when the object descended silently to the ground as if to land. Just before it landed, the craft emitted a big puff of fire and suddenly took off in a halo of luminosity, and disappeared. The account appeared in the Schenectady Gazette in New York, and the Marlin Daily Democrat in Texas.
This case shows how fine the line is between a UFO sighting and a landing. And with so many witnesses seeing a metallic object at such close-range during daylight hours -- it once again displays the typical pattern of schoolyard encounters.
