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Yankee Classic: A Strange Light over Starks

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According to Leslie Bugbee, head of Paranormal Phenomenon Research, there are several disturbing details surrounding the accident that indicate that the driver may have seen the same light. First of all, those who knew her said that she was not normally a fast driver. State police estimated her speed at 91 mph at the time of impact. Second, she was not unfamiliar with the road; she made the same trip nearly every other day. Third, when she missed the curve and went off the road, she left no skid marks, as if she either hadn't hit the brake pedal or hadn't been able to see the road bend. Finally, and most disturbing of all, there is evidence that on this dark, overcast night she had been wearing her sunglasses. Tinted, nonprescription glasses -- which were always methodically stored in their case when she wasn't wearing them -- were found beside the wreck, with blood and skin tissue on them, broken at the left temple. The woman died from injuries to the left side of her head.

The first sighting to be labeled a "flying saucer" by the press occurred on June 24, 1947, when nine disc-shaped objects, looking like "saucers skipping over water," were witnessed by an Idaho businessman flying his plane near Mount Rainier in Washington. Since that brave first pronouncement by the press, the UFO has become a national obsession, one that waxes and wanes with each new sighting. There is a certain thrill, a wonderful mystique surrounding UFOs. Interplanetary beings have been credited with Earth's ancient architecture, artifacts, and scientific advances.

On the other hand, for every unidentifiable flying object witnessed, corroborated by sober, responsible citizens -- and even photographed -- there is an official to pooh-pooh it. "Swamp-gas," "light phenomenon," "swarming gypsy moths," "a child's toy" are official explanations that seldom satisfy a shaken witness who has, by the truth of all his senses, experienced a genuine encounter.

On November 15, 1975, in Caribou, Maine, a Canadian border town, four town police officers, one state civil defense officer, three Aroostook County deputy sheriffs, many on-duty personnel at Limestone Air Force Base, and several police officers from nearby communities witnessed a sighting quite like the one in Starks. Again it appeared as a bright light in the sky, whose size and shape were undeterminable. Some people saw blinking red and green lights; one officer saw exhaust through binoculars. All witnesses agreed that as it stayed all night in the Caribou sky it never made a sound. The next day a spokesperson at Loring Air Force Base said, "It seems to be either a planet or a star."

It is certainly true that atmospheric conditions can refract and magnify the light from a star or a planet, making it appear larger and brighter than normal. Ray Fowler, director of investigations for Mutual UFO Network in Seguin, Texas, suggests that the Starks sighting was actually Venus, "the Queen of the UFOs," since it was sighted in the west where Venus rises. The planet, normally at its brightest late in the year, could have shown through a thin cloud cover at Starks and been magnified. A prism effect created by thick air could have caused it to show different colored lights, and the planet could have appeared to observers to be moving up and down, with them, or even toward them, depending on their movement on the road. But the Hendsbees were traveling east, back to Madison, when they encountered it ahead of them.

Dr. Donald Robinson, a science professor at the University of Maine at Farmington, discusses "looming," a rare light phenomenon in which a faraway surface light can appear to hang in the air and even move through the air if the light source is moving.

Both men would have to be more convincing to persuade the Starks witnesses that what they experienced that Saturday evening was a light phenomenon or a magnified planet -- for such innocent phenomena have no intelligence, do not react.

"I felt that I challenged this thing, whatever it was, for about 20 minutes," said Deputy Hendsbee. "I was determined to go up that hill because that's the way I had to go home. And three times it drove me back."

"Whatever was up there was going to conquer that hill," Mrs. Hendsbee added. "I've never seen Bud scared of anything before this."

"I've been a police officer for 23 years," Bud Hendsbee stated. "I've been shot at, had bullets go through my vehicle. I've been trapped in a well during a house fire . . . but it's not the same. You don't know what this is! It's going to and fro, up and down, floating in the air. You don't know if the thing's going to come through your windshield like a bolt of lightning.

"So then you've gone through it all in a 20-minute period. Now you're stuck with it! You're stuck with this feeling and you don't know how long it's going to take to overcome it."