Somewhere in the Skies - The St. Clair UFO Incident

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at: www.betterhelp.com/skies and get on your way to being your best self. On episode 343, we head to St. Clair, Illinois. In January of 2000, residents across multiple towns witnessed a massive triangular UFO craft in the skies. Several of those witnesses were on-duty police officers, who made reports in real-time as the incident was unfolding. You'll hear the entire story and even hear the radio transmissions between the officers and their dispatch as the event was dramatically unfolding. Episode written by Marcus Lowth. To learn more, visit: www.ufoinsight.com Voiceover by Scott Sykora. To learn more visit: www.thebeardcaster.com Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Read Ryan’s Articles by CLICKING HERE Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Copyright © 2023 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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were witnessed to a prolonged UFO encounter. Several of the witnesses were on-duty police officers who made reports in real time as the incident was unfolding. Half a decade later, in the very same region, another sighting occurred with an almost identical object. Were these strange objects top-secret military? aircraft, or were they visitors from somewhere else? This is what happened one strange night in Illinois, in what has become known as the St. Clair UFO incident. This is somewhere in the skies with Ryan's bread. The following report comes to us from then-Mufon Illinois State Director, David Marler,

and it took place in St. Clair County, Illinois. It was around 4 a.m. on the morning of January 5th, 2000, when 66-year-old Melver Noel was returning home after making a delivery to Bloomington when he decided to stop at the miniature golf course he owned in Highland. As it was a rather cold night, he was concerned that the pipes at the facility might freeze. It was as he was stepping out of his truck when something strange captured his attention. I just happened to look skyward when I saw what I thought was a bright star. but it seemed awfully low. I continued to head into my office to check the pipes.

After doing so, I headed back to my truck immediately noticed that the bright light was still overhead. In fact, it was headed in my direction. As this light descended and got closer, Melvern could now make out a structured object, triangular in shape. It was like a big house floating in the air. It had windows in it and a bright light on the inside. remained where he was watching the object, taking in as much detail as he could. It had to be the size of a football field and was about a thousand feet above the ground. It moved slowly as it made its way over the nearby trees.

It had no wings or any sign of propulsion. The lights on the outside were white and red, but the strangest thing of all, it was completely silent. The triangular object slowed slightly as it got closer to him. I had this feeling that it had spotted me looking up at it. That's when it started to pass directly over me. The triangle began to head southwest. As it moved, he also noticed the following.

I could see the windows at the back of the craft. It remained in sight for about five minutes before it disappeared into the distance. After taking a moment to gather himself, he got into his truck and set out the short distance to Highland Police Station to report what he'd seen. Melvin made his report to the dispatcher on duty that evening, Nancy Edwards. She could see that he was concerned that people wouldn't believe him, something he himself stated to her. She offered that she could see in his face that he had definitely seen something strange.

So much so that Edwards notified the dispatcher at St. Clair County Police Station, who then began circulating the information to other officers, one of whom was Officer Ed Barton and St. Clair, who took the call a little after 4.10 a.m. Leibn just received a call from Highland PD. Reverence to a truck driver just stopped in and said there was a flying object in the area of Lebanon. It was like a two-story house. It had white lights and red blinking lights, and it was last seen southwest over Lebanon. Lastly, could you check the area?

I asked Send Com if they were joking because, again, I joke around with some of the dispatchers there, and they said negative. The joke, right? No, this is not a joke. I just got off the phone with Nancy from Island PD. He was like, okay, so I asked him if the person reporting was 1055, which means DUI or drunk. Down forward, did they say if the truck driver was DUI or anything? And they said no. He said he was serious.

10 for enough. Now, during this whole time, I'm driving out here, I'm kind of going back and forth, Sinclair County. Ask me what am I supposed to do if I find it, you know, that kind of thing? Just a quick question. If I happen to find it, what am I supposed to do with it? They asked me if I wanted the number for the UFO hotline. I said negative.

Even if I saw it, I'm not going to report it. If I see it, I'm not saying a word. From his patrol car, he noticed a very bright, light to the east, approximately five or six miles from his location. The more he looked at it, the more he could see that it looked like two very large bright white lights that were so close together, it looked like they were almost touching. There were rays of lights spilling downward. He immediately turned on the headlights of his patrol car, as he made his way along Route 4 in the direction of the bizarre lights. At first, he contemplated whether the object was

a plane that was about to crash to the ground. However, the more he managed to view the anomaly, the more he could see that it was definitely not a plane. I'd be advised, there's a very bright, white light east of town. It looks like it's just east of summer field, and it keeps changing colors. I'll go there and see if maybe there's an aircraft. It doesn't look like an aircraft, though. Brown-3-40-0-4. He would. Would you contact Scott Air Force Base to see if they have anything flying in that area, please? He eventually turned under Route 50, now heading toward the small town of Summerfield.

And shortly after doing so, he could see that the object was in elongated, narrow triangle that was so big it blotted out the stars that would have been above it. On each corner were round, bright white lights that were so bright he was forced to squint to look at them. The lights were steady in intensity and appeared to be directed straight down toward the ground. In the middle of the object's underside, in between the three white lights, was a smaller red light. It was as he was taken in these details that he realized the object was no longer stationary, but began to move. And I'm more concerned, it was heading in his direction. After a moment, he pulled the car to the side of the road and turned off all the lights and radio before killing the engine. As the object continued toward him at a steady pace,

He listened for any sounds of engines or propulsion, but all that came back was complete silence. The closer the object got to Barton, like Noel earlier, the more detail he could make out. It appeared to be around 75 feet long and around 40 feet wide. Further observations suggested that it was around 200 feet away from him, and was moving at an altitude of around 1,000 feet. Then, suddenly, he noticed the object rotating in the air as it moved, not tilting in the air one way or another as a conventional aircraft would. After a moment of taking this all in, Barton took the radio and began communicating his report to the dispatcher. As he was doing so, he noticed that the object was beginning to increase in speed.

By the time it passed over him, it was moving so fast that Barton could not keep track of it. The triangle eventually sped off into the distance. As it moved away, Barton noticed a white light going along the middle of it, which itself appeared like a band of multicolored illumination. Barton would also offer, in his report, that due to his own interests in his father's extensive career in the Air Force, he was more than familiar with most kinds of conventional aircraft. So much so, he claimed, that he could usually tell the aircraft from the sound,

of its engine alone. And it was the fact that he could hear zero noise from this strange craft that made him realize he was seeing something far from a conventional aircraft. He offered to the dispatcher that the object should now be approximately

8 miles from his location near the town of Shiloh. It's going to whether it's a plane or not. It's heading west down now. It should be really close to Scott now. It soon became clear that he wouldn't be the last person who would witness the triangle of St. Clair.

As Barton's encounter was unfolding, around half a mile away in Summerfield, 43-year-old Johnny Doss could also see the triangle from his home. Doss was recovering from heart surgery and was still struggling with sleep. Hence on the night in question, he was why. wide awake listening to the police radio that he and his wife Cindy tuned into to pass the time. However, at this moment, rather than the usual chatter, Doss found himself listening to Officer Barton's description of the triangle he was seen. Doss particularly remembers the officer stating that the object was just east of Summerfield,

and that it keeps changing colors. At this point, curious to say the least, Doss made the decision to step outside. When he did so, he immediately saw the object Barton had described, recalling that it was way larger than an airliner with several bright lights. From its position in the sky, Doss could see that the object had only very recently passed over his house. He remained in his yard watching the low-flying craft. In total, he kept the object in view for about three minutes, before it vanished.

behind some trees. By the time he returned to the house and his bedroom, Cindy asked where he'd been and what he was doing. Almost in a state of shock, he simply replied, quote, I was outside, looking at a UFO. DOS wouldn't be the last to see the UFO, as the sightings continued elsewhere. During this time, another police officer,

David Martin of the Shiloh Police Department, reported seeing the object following Barton's instructions that the object appeared to be heading towards Shiloh. On January 5th, about 4.3.m. Morning, Leibman gets a call for this flying object, and after he had seen it and said that it might be in Shiloh, Leibn. I'm driving right here, eastbound of Leibn Avenue, and right in this field is where I observed it.

Encombe, 4404. I looked up in the sky and observed this huge arrow-shaped triangular shaped object just floating in the sky right in the open field right over here and it had three big bright lights lighten up the entire sky just beneath the flying object

and it was just floating gradually west-southerly along this field over here at a gradual slow speed and as I stopped right up the road here to get out and see if I can get a picture or observe it better the object with

unexplainably in the naked eye was just from gradually moving to all the way down in the field like within the snap of a finger or a wink of the eye and there was no sound I had my window down the radio was off

and there was no sounds no nothing coming from the flying object and it was every bit of 75 to 100 yards that appeared to be wide I didn't get a very good look at the length-wise. Next thing you know, it just was down the road.

It was when he decided to pull his car to the side of the road that a further twist occurred. Almost immediately after stepping outside the vehicle, the triangle, which had previously been traveling around 15 miles per hour, suddenly sped up to around 100 miles per hour, almost as if it was aware of his interest and presence of it. Martin watched for several minutes as the object eventually disappeared into the distance. Listening to these events on his own patrol car radio was also Officer Craig Stevens,

who was driving his patrol car near the town of Milstadt. As he steadily grew more curious, Stevens decided to begin in the direction the officers had stated the unknown object was heading, taking him to the east of town. He eventually brought his car to a stop at a car wash, scanning the currently empty sky for any signs of the anomalous object. After a short time, he decided to head to the north toward the town of Lederkrantz Park. He arrived at a big open field where he brought his vehicle to a stop. To begin with, all he could see was the blinking navigation lights of commercial aircraft overhead. head. Then, at just before 4.30 a.m., when he turned his attention to another part of the sky,

he could see the huge triangular-shaped object, moving slowly approximately 1,000 feet above the ground. Are you serious? The Summer in the Sky's podcast is free to listen to you every week, but if you would like to help support the show, we have a very active Patreon page. where you give what you think the show is worth. In return, you'll get early access to the main show, bonus episodes, and priority to ask our guests your listener questions. Your support truly makes the show continue and grow.

So, to learn more and to join, visit patreon.com slash somewhere scouts. And that's when I first saw it. It was a huge object. It was an arrowhead-shaped object. It was concave in the rear, and it was huge. For the size of the object, it was moving very slowly. Only about 500 to 1,000 feet off the ground. It was very low, so I got a real good look at it.

There were three lights to the rear of the object, one in the center and one on either side on the right and left side. And then in the center of the rear in the concave section, it was like a strobing white light that, got bright and then dimmed off as the strobing effect went across. Then on the bottom center of the object, I observed it was a red blinking light. It headed straight to the north, and then as it banked, it made a distinct tilt, and then it turned and went toward the St. Louis DuPoe direction,

which would be to the northwest. It didn't sway in the wind or anything like a blimp possibly would. So I hopped out of my patrol car, went to the rear of the trunk, grabbed the Polaroid, snapped a quick picture of it as it headed to the north. What does it look like to you? Possibly headed toward up. When he viewed the picture, it was nothing but a blurry image. The object continued on its path, disappearing into the distance now in a northwesterned,

direction. Around five minutes after Stevens had radioed in his report in the nearby town of Dupo, Officer Matt Janie was on patrol when he too witnessed the triangle. Although he wasn't as close to it as previous witnesses, he did view the craft through his binoculars, and his descriptions and details more than corroborate the previous witnesses. From the time they told me that most I'd seen it, I drove probably about five miles. down the highway and pulled off the side of the road to look and another officer from a neighboring town came up and I told him what I was doing we both laughed about it and made a few jokes and he left and I got back in my car and went maybe a quarter mile and I

seen something in the sky. And then you know before I'd seen a couple little planes because parks airports about five miles from here that were coming in but then after I seen this other object it didn't appear to be like any plane I'd seen before. I looked at with binoculars. It looked a lot brighter. The lights were a lot more, I guess, had a lot more brightness to them than a regular aircraft would. And about that time, the dispatcher called me back again,

would know if I still seen the object. I said yes, and she said at Lambert Airport's on the phone. They said, there's nothing in the area around you. This object was above me about 500 feet, and it was huge. I couldn't tell exactly how far it was. how far it was. It's a pretty dark night, and I was looking with binoculars, but it was definitely off to the east pretty far. While Officer Janie was the last police officer to witness the object in the early hours of that January morning, around two hours after his sighting, another Illinois

resident would report seeing what would appear to be the same object. At around 6.45 a.m., a 50-year-old English teacher, Stephen Wanacott, was making his way to work at each of the same East St. Louis High School. As he was driving along the highway, he quickly looked out over Frank Holton State Park. As he did so, he noticed something strange in the early morning sky. Like other witnesses, to begin with, he thought the object was simply an airplane, in this case from nearby Park's airport. However, the more he looked at it, the more he realized it was far too big to be an airplane. Wanakot began to slow his vehicle, eager to keep the officer. in sight. At this point, the sun was just beginning to rise, and as it did so behind the object,

he began to see that it was an arrowhead shape. Furthermore, it had bright lights as well as many other smaller lights around it. He would later recall that as he was moving throughout the sighting, he wasn't certain if the object was stationary or moving itself. In the weeks and months that followed the sighting, this region of Illinois, received increased media attention, as well as seeing a surge of representatives from UFO organizations traveling to the area, looking to investigate the sightings for themselves. The initial news reports on the encounter were brief and reserved, to save the least. However, both news and newspaper coverage began to build steadily.

And a week after the encounter, this story was front-page news. Officer Stevens would go on to offer several days after the encounter that the whole thing was, quote, driving him nuts, and that he hadn't been able to sleep for the last day and a half. Stevens, along with Officer Barton, would eventually appear on Art Bell's radio show to talk about the mysterious events. The media interest eventually grew to such a level that one of the police chiefs, Ed Wilkerson, of the Milestat Police Department, ordered to, that none of his officers were to give interviews to any media outlets. This intense interest lasted for a considerable amount of time, with many of the witnesses, perhaps particularly the police officers, almost becoming local celebrities within the community.

It is interesting to note that all of the witnesses were not at all comfortable with the sudden limelight they found themselves in, something which distances, claims of a hoax or orchestration, even more. Ultimately, there was no sign that the events were the result of a bizarre hoax or some kind of strange mass hallucination. Whatever was seen by the multiple witnesses was something very real. There are plenty of intriguing details that emerge from the St. Clair County UFO encounters. Although the case is classed by most as a, quote, black triangle sighting, there were some variations in the witnesses' descriptions of the vehicle. For example, the first witness, Melvarnold,

described the object as being rectangular as opposed to triangular, although it could be suggested that the angle from which the object was viewed could explain such a discrepancy. Or, maybe there were multiple craft of different shapes. There were also slight differences regarding the lights of the craft, both in their configuration, how they appeared, and even the colors. With one witness offering, he'd seen blue lights as well as red and white reported by the other witnesses. Another thing

to contemplate is why there was such a long stretch of time between the sighting of Officer Janie and Wanakot. Did the object simply take a route with no witnesses? Or perhaps more likely, did it have some sort of cloaking technology that

was able to render it invisible? It's hard to explain. It's like it tried to camouflage itself against the night sky because you could tell it was black and metallic in color, but you could almost like it was trying to project the star field above it on the underside. While it might sound like a small detail, we have to consider that a craft flying so low over an area where many people would have been venturing outside to start their day would have resulted in many more sightings. However, it appears to be a craft flying so low over an area where many people

appears that the object simply vanished, only appearing when it was viewed around two hours later by Wanakot. Just what happened during that time remains a mystery as well. Even more mysterious, a sighting several years later would only add to the nuance and intrigue of the St. Clair UFO. A little over six years later in the same region, this time in Highland, Illinois, at around 4.50 a.m. on October 20, 2006, a strikingly similar sighting unfolded. According to the research files of Darrell Barker, on the morning in question, a witness referred to as L was in the kitchen of the home he shared with his wife, preparing to embark on an early morning jog. However, as he looked out the kitchen window, he could see a bright light in the sky,

and it seemed to be heading in the direction of his property. He watched in awe as the object approached, noting that a, quote, beam of white light was projected ahead of it, that reached a considerable distance. By the time it was almost directly over the top of the house, he rushed to wake his wife. She followed him, still dazed from being dragged from her sleep to the front door. However, when he flung the door open,

he was shocked to find nothing at all overhead. After several seconds of confusion, though, the object appeared from over the roof of the house and was soon directly above them. Elle would later estimate that the object to have been at an unbelievably low altitude, of a little over 100 feet, now appearing distinctly triangular in shape.

The object remained in sight for several seconds before it eventually disappeared. Elle's wife returned inside first, followed shortly by Elle. A short time later, a second sighting occurred. Deciding to set out on his run, as he had planned, Elle left the house a short time after the object had disappeared. Around 40 minutes later, however, as he reached a curve along the quiet road, he was shocked to see yet another strange object,

this time at a distance of around seven miles from where he was running. Although he couldn't explain it, he immediately sensed that this was the very same object that had made its way over his house a short time earlier, recalling that it could see the same bright light. He watched the object for several moments, noting that it was simply hovering in the same place. Then, without warning, it suddenly shot off to the north and vanished within seconds. Elle recalled that a strange multicolored streak of light was visible as the object moved.

El would later state in his report that if this had been a military vehicle, why were the lights so bright? And why was it flying at such a low altitude? Something that we might not expect from a top secret military vehicle exercise. Whatever the object was remained a mystery to Elle. Whether this sighting in October 2006 had any kind of connection to the sightings reported in January of 2000 is obviously. open for debate. The similarities, however, even down to the similar time of day, are intriguing, nonetheless. Was this triangular object a top-secret military aircraft? If so, what was the purpose of such a public display at such a low altitude? Was it simply an oversight on the military's part?

If it was, might this explain why there was a sudden two-hour gap in between? the penultimate and final encounter? Or might we even contemplate that this brazen appearance was purposeful, perhaps designed to see how many residents noticed and what their reactions might have been? Or might we suspect that this strange aircraft was something not made by human hands? Even more fantastic, a mixture of human-made craft using some sort of non-human technology. Either way, why did this craft allow itself to be seen so easily? Were the possible occupants merely indifferent to whether they were noticed or not?

Or, much like our speculative scenario with the military, maybe all they wanted was to be noticed. No matter what the triangle of St. Clair was, it left the police officers and other witnesses truly shaken. and also left them with far more questions than answers, answers that they, and so many, continue to search for somewhere in the skies. The whole time I saw I had my windows rolled down, and I didn't have the radio going or nothing like that. And the thing, it was just like a slow, it was just like a slow moving when I saw it. Now it was only at the time going probably about 20 miles an hour or so in my car.

and as I pulled over to get out of my car it was like just within the snap of the finger it was way down you know way down the other side of town and I just stood there and looked at myself and I'm like okay it was just here and now it's way down there how did it do that it was amazing

this episode was written by Marcus Loth to learn more visit UFOinsight.com Voiceover by Scott Sikora. Check out his podcast, The Beardcaster, wherever you get podcasts. Please rate and review Somewhere in the Skies on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get pods. Follow us on Twitter at SummerSkies and Instagram at Somewhere Skies Pod. Many of our episodes are available in video format as well. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch.

Links to everything are in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching. Somewhere in the Skies. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network.