02-28-2007On Nov. 7, a group of O’Hare International Airport airline employees insist they saw a flying saucerlike object hover low over the Chicago airport.
Nothing out of the ordinary was found by a check of the radar. The Federal Aviation Administration didn’t investigate the matter further, and the sighting was dismissed as a “weather phenomenon.” But the employees swear they saw something.
In April 2004, Rochester, Ind., residents came very close to an unidentified flying object.
“That was a very large sighting about 10:30 at night,” said Roger Sugden, assistant state director for Mutual UFO Network of Indiana.
MUFON found people who reported being within 200 feet of the object. And the people were willing to talk about it.
“These are very credible people,” said Sugden.
Sugden will teach a 3-day course at the IPFW Warsaw Center from 9 to 11 a.m. this Saturday and March 10 and 17.
“It’s called ‘Perception, Reality and Sightings in Indiana,’” Sugden said. “What I’m going to do is give people a lot of information in a short time.”
The course is $75 and people can register at IPFW Warsaw Center or online. Sugden said he will give the history of sightings, perception of them and the reality of UFOs. The O’Hare sighting will be one of the examples of sightings Sugden will discuss.
He said when he discusses UFOs with people, he tells them a UFO is an unidentified object that is investigated, but the object is never identified. If the object is identified, then it becomes an IFO, identified flying object. The sightings in Rochester in 2004 are UFOs because they’ve never been identified.
In addition to IFOs and UFOs, Sugden said there also are USOs. USOs are unidentified submersing objects, and go into or out of water. Most USO sightings are near California.
“No one knows what they are,” said Sugden.
With all the technology in the world, Sugden said it leaves him confused as to what these unidentified objects are.
His course also will touch on crop circles. Since the 1800s, people have reported crop circles. And while people can make generic versions of crop circles, Sugden said he’s been to ones people can’t make. No one knows what they are, but people have theories.
“There are fakes and there are real ones,” Sugden said. “There’s no shortage in this country. ... You don’t have to go to England to see these.”
Sugden said he’s had an interest in UFOs for many years. In the 1990s, he looked MUFON up, found the organization to be interesting, and got involved.
Recently, at IPFW in Fort Wayne, he first taught the UFO course. “It went over really well,” he said.
Of the people who attended the course, he said some reported having seen UFOs, some had a long-term interest in them and some attendees were skeptics. The first thing he tells all the people present is whether or not they believe, there are still unidentified flying objects. The problem for many people is that they are there.
Sugden said, “If you want to find out more about UFOs, come to a course where someone can give you more information.”
On the Net:
IPFW, Warsaw: www.ipfw.edu/warsaw/courses.shtml
Mutual UFO Network of Indiana: indianamufon.homestead.com