PRINTIdentifying The Unknown
March 23, 2006 | 12:00 a.m. CST
In the nearly empty La Tolteca Mexican Restaurant on Stadium Boulevard, members of the Missouri Investigators Group discuss UFOs and paranormal phenomena during a lunch of enchiladas and burritos. Their conversation carries over the ranchera music playing in the background. The wait staff continues with business as usual. If they are surprised by the group’s discussion, they don’t show it.
“This is what I love about La Tolteca; they’re so laid-back,” says Barbara Becker, one of the group’s co-founders. “I’m not sure of any other restaurant that would let us do this.”
Becker, a Columbia resident, organized the lunch because Gary Hart, another co-founder, has traveled from his Bloomington, Ill., home to share his research with area group members. Hart and Becker are ufologists. They study UFO sightings and reports of anomalous phenomena, Hart’s term for physical events that seem to contradict existing scientific theories.
Becker primarily investigates UFO sightings by conducting in-depth interviews with witnesses. Hart conducts similar interviews as part of his investigations but also relies on equipment such as radar, night-vision cameras and electromagnetic-field devices. He tries to gather evidence of physical changes at sites that have generated multiple reports of anomalous phenomena.
Hart works at an auto plant, but the job just serves as a way to fund his research. He has invested thousands of dollars and more than 17 years in his quest to approximate the methodology of science in his investigations of earthlights, will-o’-the-wisps — ghostly lights of unexplained origin — and UFO sightings.
At La Tolteca, Hart discusses the soil samples he acquired from crop circles found in a cow pasture in Oregon County. As he speaks, he passes around photos of matted browning grass in the shape of circles.
“The dirt had micro-particles of metal and iron in the circle,” Hart says. “The highest concentration was right around the edge of the circle and in declining concentrations out to 300 feet outside of the circle. So, there’s a pattern of change in the soil. How that got there, we don’t know. I think this may be a natural phenomenon in this case.”
He also passes around photographs taken with a newly purchased infrared camera that renders visible the thermal energy emitted by objects. In one, the water in a metal tank materializes like a Day-Glo rainbow.
“It’s understood when you have paranormal phenomena that you are looking at some sort of energy discharge such as a change in temperature,” Hart says. “That’s how the camera contributes to investigations. You can see the phenomenon in ways beyond what your eyes can see.”
Beyond. This word unites members of the Missouri Investigators Group. They come from different backgrounds, believe in different ideals and exhibit different personalities. Some have seen UFOs, and others have not. All, however, believe in occurrences that transpire beyond human perception, beyond the current body of knowledge and beyond conventional wisdom.
In the spring of 2000, Becker, Hart and fellow ufologists Brian Adams of Springfield and Lou Ashby of Salem, Mo., co-founded the group in order to better understand the otherworldly occurrences happening in their Midwestern backyards. Its mission is to establish, in each of the 115 Missouri counties, representatives who can provide witnesses a resource to report sightings, generate credible written records of these sightings and investigate possible causes for the reports.
The representatives also watch for anomalous activity in their areas and submit their observations to the group. The organization then submits its data to the National UFO Reporting Center, an online databank.
“The primary goal of the organization is letting people know that when they see something, they have someone to talk to,” Becker says.
Becker explains that many witnesses rely on the Missouri Investigators Group because they face ridicule when they report sightings to law-enforcement or government officials. Even some members of the organization worry that openly demonstrating an earnest interest in UFOs could brand them as flakes or lunatics.
As a result, these members often feel as if they have two lives. Becker, a customer-service employee in Columbia, conducts ufology activities — and is appearing in this story — under her birth name because she is wary of undermining her credibility and tarnishing the reputation of her husband, a researcher at MU. Adams, who works with an air-quality-control agency, and Hart are open about their activities but won’t discuss them with their co-workers.
Adams, Hart and Becker speculate that most people dismiss the concept of anomalous phenomena as a joke because they fear challenges to religious beliefs and currently accepted scientific laws. But UFO sightings have stretched physical and intellectual horizons for some group members.
Recent Missouri sightings
This information was submitted by witnesses to the National UFO Reporting Center.
If you think you see a UFO... Visit the Missouri Investigators Group Web site at http://ufomig.bravehost.com, or contact Barbara Becker, one of the co-founders of MIG, at 356-1312.
When: 3/6/06 at 8:30 p.m.
Where: Cabool
Shape: Circle
Duration: intermittent
Summary: “Large red circular light in sky.”
When: 3/6/06 at 1:30 p.m.
Where: Huntsville
Shape: Oval
Duration: 20 seconds
Summary: “I saw this dull silver oval shape object in the north sky was a clear day it was moving west to east at 1:30 in the evening.”
When: 2/25/06 at 1:15 a.m.
Where: Springfield
Shape: Oval
Duration: 7 minutes
Summary: “UFO near Stockton Lake in Missouri as we were heading back to Springfield.”
When: 2/9/06 at 7:40 p.m.
Where: Butler
Shape: Unknown
Duration: 25 minutes
Summary: “While I was at my farm pasture I saw a strange object it was very strange.”
When: 1/19/06 at 7:45 p.m.
Where: Mountain Grove
Shape: Circle
Duration: 15 minutes
Summary: “Bright orange lights in sky over Mtn Grove, Mo.”
“Once you see something like that, you’re hooked,” Becker says. “All of a sudden the Earth is no longer just the Earth. The horizon just expands. You just start questioning things that people take for granted.”
Becker’s soft, measured voice shimmers with excitement whenever she reminisces about her first sighting. Although it occurred 27 years ago, she remembers every detail.
One clear evening in June of 1978, Becker, her husband and a mutual friend drove 60 miles from their St. Louis homes to check out rumors of UFO sightings in the rural town of Elsberry. Becker didn’t believe she would see anything but relished the prospect of a spontaneous country drive on a summer night.
Approximately 40 miles outside of Elsberry on Missouri 79, Becker saw an orange glow punctuating the minor roads that turned off the highway and culminated at the Mississippi River. Circular lights that appeared to be the size of quarters followed the water just above the treetops. The lights puzzled Becker, but because she had never been to Elsberry, she thought they might be normal in the area.
The trio arrived in town at 9 p.m., unsure of where to go. Impulsively, they veered away from the river and pulled off on a farm road. Becker’s husband wanted to set up their tripod and camera, but Becker vetoed the suggestion. Logic told her there was nothing to see, but she still worried that the equipment would hinder them if they needed to flee.
As they walked onto an adjacent field, they saw two additional orange lights rise above the southern horizon, travel horizontally, lower and repeat the motion in reverse. Becker’s companions speculated the objects were airplanes taking off and landing at Lambert International Airport, but Becker knew Lambert was too far away. A half-dollar-sized disc of white light approached the group from the northern horizon. Herds of cows in the field mooed as the light passed over them, and they fell silent immediately after it passed.
The light grew larger as it loomed closer. When it was about 100 feet above the ground and 100 feet away, Becker could see its distinctive form. It was oblong and glowed orange. Yellow light streamed out of what appeared to be windows. She watched, stunned, as the object passed above her and traveled toward the lights in the South. Suddenly, a vehicle full of frantic teenagers barreled down the road and forced her to look away.
“Did you see that?” the kids shouted. “We’re going to go catch it. We’re going to go see where they went!”
The lights were gone when she looked back, but that summer Becker spent every free moment in Elsberry. She remembers seeing a silver ball hovering over a field in broad daylight, a celestial whirlpool of clouds radiating eerie light and a swarm of tiny lights darting across the night sky.
“I’ve had way too many sightings to be credible,” Becker jokes.
Becker takes credibility in ufology seriously and has bucked the popular opinion of ufologists when she felt it being compromised. In 1997, she published a paper titled “One Picture is Worth a Thousand Words,” which argues that pictures of a series of UFO sightings in Gulf Breeze, Fla., were falsified. Her statements gave rise to an online debate in the ufology community, and she found herself at odds with members of the Mutual UFO Network, an organization to which she belonged. She left the group because she became convinced that it was secretive, gullible and prone to politics. Soon after, in one of the corners of cyberspace that serves as the ufology community’s salons, she met the like-minded co-founders of Missouri Investigators Group.
The organization’s official meetings are sporadic and happen once a month or less frequently. Much of the in-depth conversation about UFOs occurs among members on the group’s Internet mailing list, which is open by invitation only. Often, members who have formed friendships will gather for social outings. The group is conducive to these friendships because it creates an environment in which ufologists do not have to censor themselves.
At La Tolteca, their conversation exudes familiarity as they address football games, computer troubles and the best places in town to buy vinyl records. Just as comfortably, the talk moves on to the veracity of Hart’s CD of Bigfoot noises. The restaurant’s manager lets Hart plug his CD player into an outlet on the wall. When Hart presses play, a deep voice claims: “Bigfoot talk, that’s what this CD is all about. Bigfoot’s voice.” Echoing, otherworldly moans follow the introduction.
“Where’d you get this?” Becker asks.
“I read a book about it, and it’s online,” Hart replies.
Becker recounts a childhood incident in which, late one night, she heard an eerie scream while sitting on the stoop of her St. Louis home. She says the next day she heard a news report that someone had told the police they had seen a gorilla in downtown St. Louis.
“Is that supposed to be Bigfoot?” Becker asks skeptically about the sounds on Gary’s CD. “What I heard didn’t sound like that.”
“They’re calling to each other; maybe it’s a mating sound,” another member conjectures.
“Then they sure are in trouble,” Becker says with a laugh.
The CD jogs Becker’s memory. She remembers a chiropractor once told her he’d heard an inexplicable animal sound at Rock Bridge Memorial State Park. An expression of glee bursts through her previously calm demeanor as she suggests capping the afternoon with a spur-of-the-moment stroll through the park.
The group members who are up for the outing arrive at Rock Bridge chatting animatedly.
“I don’t really think we’ll see anything like this,” Becker says quietly. “This is more for fun. Usually a sighting is very spontaneous.”
During the walk, Hart lags behind to take pictures, and two other members race ahead to the top of a hill. The brisk wind dissipates what is left of the dwindling conversation.
Becker stops on the trail and surveys a landscape aglow in late-afternoon sunshine. She does not hear Bigfoot’s wail, but her expression seems to demand a promise of possibility from the silence.
