Vermont’s UFO Invasion
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Whoa, what was that? I don't know, but something just flew over our heads. You think it could be one of those drones everyone's been seeing all over the place? I don't think that's it. I mean, it didn't sound like propellers. Plus, we're in East Richford, Vermont. We're less than a mile from the Canadian border. There's not much population around here for miles. Yeah, I saw that driving in. I mean, just a few houses, a couple farms, a lot of trees. Yeah.

Whatever that was, it wasn't a plane. Yeah, no way. It definitely wasn't a helicopter. Nope. I guess it could be some kind of a high-tech drone, but what could it possibly be spying on up here? Border Patrol? Maybe, but yeah, there's nothing to see up here. So I guess we're going to have to call it

Oh, and it was flying. And it was an object. I guess we just saw a UFO. I guess we did. And I can tell you, we're not the first one here in northern Vermont. Back in 1982, there were a rash of strange sightings that made the papers. An invasion, they called it. We've come to East Richford to search for UFOs. ♪

Hello, I'm Jeff Belanger. Welcome to episode 379 of the New England Legends podcast. And I'm Ray Ogier. Thank you for joining us on our mission to chronicle every legend in New England, one story at a time. This week, we have a big announcement. We do. Our annual zombie prom is back. Brains.

Saturday, February 22nd at the Doubletree Hotel in Milford, Massachusetts. It's always such a great party. Definitely. You can dress as a zombie, a zombie hunter, or wear plain clothes and dress as a victim. The cost is only $25 a person in advance, and all proceeds go to benefit a great charity called Community Harvest Project in Grafton, Massachusetts.

You can find a link to buy tickets in our episode description or on our website. We'll go searching for UFOs in Northern Vermont right after this word from our sponsor.

Okay, we've covered some UFO stories in the past. We have. Betty and Barney Hill's famous UFO abduction incident back in 1961. Right, right. If you remember, they were traveling home from Montreal, which is just about 60 miles northwest of where we are right now. And they were heading home to southern New Hampshire when they spotted something odd in the sky in the New Hampshire town of Exeter. That's right. Yeah, it was a...

captivating story that was turned into books and TV shows and all kinds of other things. Yeah, so strange objects have been in these parts before. Definitely, they have. And I don't believe that we're alone in the universe. Sure. Wouldn't make sense for all of this to exist just for us on one tiny planet. If there's intelligent life out there that evolved thousands or even millions of years before us,

who knows what kind of technology they'd have. I completely agree. But why would they come here? I mean, it's pretty egocentric to think we're worth observing or that we could be a threat to anyone other than ourselves. Now, to be fair, no one's saying these UFOs come from some distant planet or galaxy. That's true. We don't know where they came from. And once in a while, there's not just one sighting, but a bunch in one area witnessed by multiple people who are all reliable. It

It's enough that it creates a flap and makes the news, which is exactly what happened here in northern Vermont. So let's head back to 1982 and watch the skies. It's late March of 1982. Ronald Reagan is president of the United States. I love rock and roll from Joan Jett and the Blackhearts is number one on the radio. And here in East Richford, Vermont, locals are buzzing about something strange in the skies. They are. Though it's technically spring, you wouldn't know it this far north. The weather's still cold and frosty.

It's early, about 4.30 in the morning. The sun isn't up yet, and we're standing outside the farm of Cedric Morse on West Jay Road. That's when Morse spots something a few hundred yards down the hill. Oh, I see it. There's three lights. Yeah. They're maybe three or four feet apart from each other. They kind of look like headlights, except... Yeah, weird. I mean, a headlight would cast a light ahead of them. We should see the road illuminated in front of those lights. Exactly. But these three lights are just glowing and sitting there.

Cedric Morris thinks it's strange for someone to be out here in this remote area this hour. So he's jumping into his car to head down there to investigate. We should go with him. Yeah. The road has a thin layer of ice on it from the heavy frost last night.

Hmm. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing there. I don't see anything at all. The lights were here when we got in the car. Yep. We didn't drive more than 30 or 40 seconds over that slight ridge and they're gone. Okay. This is even weirder. What's that? Look at the road we just came down from the Morse farm. Okay. You can clearly see the tire tracks we left in the frosty road.

Yeah, clear as can be. Okay, look around. There's no other tracks anywhere near us. If those were cars or motorcycles or even people with lanterns, there'd be some kind of tracks in the frost just like we're leaving right now. You're right. That's so odd. Now, this wasn't Morse's first UFO sighting either. Back in September of 1962, he and his wife Doris got a phone call from their neighbor, Phyllis and Robert Waterhouse, claiming that something strange was hovering over their farm's milkshed.

So the Morse's drove the short distance down the road to sea. That's when they saw what he described as two big rounded metallic dome-like objects in the sky. Now a few minutes later, they spotted another pair of these objects coming up from the south. He described them as looking like oatmeal bowls upside down.

Morse said he and his wife joined the Waterhouse family standing outside their front door and watched these objects for several minutes. The objects made no noise at all and then sped away at incredible speeds. So Morse was already a believer. Yeah, that he was. Now back then they called the nearby U.S. Border Patrol, who came out, but the objects were already long gone, and eventually a government official came to investigate and advised them not to talk about it because it could cause a panic.

Now, with young kids in school, they agreed. They didn't want their kids to get teased. But that was way back in 1962. Today is totally different. Morse isn't alone in all this either. There have been so many sightings that the National UFO Reporting Center in Siena, Washington, has taken notice. The sheer volume of sightings in the region lately is highly unusual and unexplained. And that also attracts the attention of the local newspapers.

Once a few of these sightings make the papers, others also come forward. UFO reports are pouring in from Richford and Windsor and from highly credible witnesses like Police Chief Homer Combs. Back in November, he was patrolling Richford's golf course when he saw, quote, two huge, real big, orange-colored lights moving across the same J.P. Valley that was just below the Morse Farm. Police Chief Combs knows what he saw.

Earlier this month, a St. Albans nurse was visiting her mother in East Richford. At dusk, they heard a loud roar over the house, so they went out to the porch to investigate. She said she saw what looks like an object that, quote, looked black.

like cast iron, the size of a normal plane, but with a bug-shaped body flying at treetop level. It had wings pointed upward and many blinking red lights all over the wings and bottom. It was heading towards East Richford. Police Chief Combs said earlier this month he was getting a call almost every single day from locals who had seen something strange in the sky. Back in February, another police officer, Sergeant Richard Polland, saw a UFO from his home around 6 p.m.,

He called into the police department to ask his colleagues to look up in the direction of his house.

Officers went outside and saw a triangular craft with red and blue lights flying about 1,000 feet in the air. They were observed through binoculars cruising along and then suddenly changing direction and speeding off towards Mount Escutney. Soon after, they saw two U.S. military jets racing overhead. They seemed to be pursuing these crafts. When the jets came on the scene, the lights on the black triangles went dark and they seemed to vanish.

Just a week ago, on March 22nd, local firefighters Ralph Burnham and Dave Kipling, along with Police Sergeant Gordon Gillen, gazed skyward around 11.30 p.m. to see red, blue, green, and white lights in a triangular pattern. Now, they watched it hover from the parking lot of the Grand Union grocery store. Sergeant Gillen decided to flash the blue lights on his police cruiser. Now, when he did, the lights on the craft grew brighter, almost as if responding to the police lights. As stories of these encounters circulate,

Soon, even more people come forward, like John and Denise LaCroix, who had a strange sighting about a year ago along Route 7 just south of Burlington, Vermont. Denise described the craft as something as big as an airplane with square windows all around the bottom.

She said there was one bright light that seemed to be flashing in sequence from one window to the next, and one steady light coming from the central window at the bottom, the top of the craft they described as dome-shaped. Now, the LaCroix's kept quiet about their encounter for fear of ridicule, but when they saw police officers and firefighters coming forward, they wanted to share their story too. As the newspapers run articles on these sightings, witnesses soon learn...

that they're not alone. And everyone else is left to ponder if we are also not alone. And that brings us back to today.

Now what's interesting to me is how there were noticeable differences in the descriptions of the UFOs. Yeah. I mean, some were dark triangles, some were dome-shaped, some had intricate lights, and one was just three strange lights. We can't stress enough that nobody's claiming these are craft from some distant galaxy. The short answer is we don't know what they are or where they came from or why they're here.

but this was clearly a UFO flap, a rash of sightings in one region with multiple credible witnesses. And here's another point. If these are some secret government aircraft,

you wouldn't think the government would light them up like a Christmas tree for all to see. It draws a lot of attention. That's a good point. Clearly, a bunch of people witnessed something up here in northern Vermont. These are people who lived here a long time and know what they normally see and don't see in the sky. They know various airplanes, hot air balloons, helicopters, ultralights, things like that. They also know when something doesn't look like anything else.

Sometimes we need to put ourselves in the shoes of the witnesses. I mean, it's easy to tell another person they were mistaken, but what if it was you? You know what you saw.

So did they. Like any UFO flap, eventually the frequency of sightings died down for a while and became a memory until something stirs up those memories again. Something like a rash of drone sightings, spy balloons, and U.S. military pilots sharing camera footage of UFOs or UAPs on national television news and telling Americans we don't know what it is or where it came from. Something is surely out there. ♪

Something is out there and something is giving us a lot to talk about and think about. And that takes us to After the Legend, where we continue the discussion and sometimes veer off course. After the Legend is brought to you by our Patreon patrons. This group of insiders helps us out each month with our hosting and production costs, our marketing and everything else it takes to bring you two podcasts each week. We can't do it without them. It's just three bucks per month for that to get early access to new episodes, plus bonus episodes and content every

No one else gets to hear. Just head over to patreon.com slash newenglandlegends to sign up. We would be most grateful. And to see some pictures related to this week's episode, you can click on the link in our episode description or go to our website and click on episode 379.

Such a fun topic. I know. I mean, it just makes you wonder. Also, I just want to point out real quick, most of what we know about this rash of UFO sightings in Richford, Vermont back in 1982 came from the April 4th, 1982 Burlington Free Press coverage. So well done them. And I like the coverage too, because it was just matter of fact, police chiefs, firefighters saying, this is what I saw. This is what it is. Nobody, but nobody said little green men. Nobody said distant galaxies. Right.

But absolutely everyone agreed this is stuff that does not belong in our skies, and we saw it. And it seems like upstanding citizens. I mean, you've got police chiefs and cops and firefighters, just normal town folk. Nothing to gain by sharing their stories. It's like crazy Larrys not looking up at the sky and seeing something. Nothing to gain, and if anything, something to lose. But when enough of them came forward—

okay, fine. Doubt the integrity of one police officer, but like firefighters and like multiple police officers and local farmers, like at some point you're like, all right, you know, what's the conspiracy here? Right. Nobody gained anything. And one of the best points that you made was that there were lights and they're flashing and they're, they're causing you to look up at this thing and wonder what it is. You,

the government wouldn't do that if they were just testing a new plane. Right. So now the black triangles in the sky, a lot of people have pointed out, well, that could have been stealth bombers that were flying. Sure.

But they can turn the lights off. Do they hover as well? No, I don't think, not the stealth. Not that we knew of, right? So you see a stealth bomber, it's flying over you. It's an airplane. It's a fixed wing aircraft that flies, you know, but it's not lit up with all kinds of colored lights. If anything, they have the red and green light. On an airplane. Like anyone, red, right, returning, right? So if you see the red on the right, it's coming at you. If you see the red on the left, it's going away, right? Like that's the...

Same with boats, right? Boats and airplanes have the same thing. So yeah, you wouldn't light it up like a Christmas tree because it just draws a ton of attention. What's the point of that? The only thing worth pointing out is that it is a border town, like one mile from the Canadian border. Border crossings are not a huge problem in Canada today and certainly not in 1982, but

So, I mean, is it really national security to watch that remote wooded border 60 miles from Montreal? I don't know. But we can't help but look for reasons. And the other thing too, police

officers and folks that are first responders, their job is to be observers. Right. Like, you know, cop instinct. You sit there and some car drives by and you get a tingle. You don't know why. You know, like, but that a cop will say, well, that's experience or that, you know. Right. The

It's just something inside of them that's just like, hmm. And if nothing's going on, you can't help but gaze at the skies. Right. And you would think that an official would get some kind of word from the government, we're just doing something. Right. So don't be spooked if you see something in the sky. Don't pull out your service revolver and start shooting. Right. Which, by the way, I mean, you know there's some cops in this country that would do that. Absolutely. Yeah.

New Jersey was pleading with people just a few weeks ago saying, when you see these drones, please don't shoot them with your guns because you might knock it out of the sky and it could fall on a kid. Right. Right. Like for no other reason than that. Not that we're, you know. Well, it's funny that they told us that, but they didn't tell us what they were, which I'm sure they do know at this point. I don't think it was anything alien. A few have been. But I think the government knows. Sure.

Sure. And drone techno... I mean, I've seen videos of drones that are strong enough to lift a person where a guy held the drone, was flown out above a pond, and then let go 20 feet above the water. That sounds like fun. It does sound like fun. But so, I mean, if that's something a civilian can get their hands on, right? Like to go play in the pond. Right. Imagine what...

the government has, and foreign governments. So sure, absolutely. I think these drone sightings are probably related to some sort of espionage. But no offense to our friends in New Jersey. Yeah.

I don't know. What are you looking at? Pizza places? Like, you know, I don't know. The beach? It's closed. I mean, it's not closed, but no one's out there till the summer. What are you doing? Springsteen's not touring right now. It's not the prettiest of states. You know, parts of it are nice. Not much happening, though. They're looking for the Jersey Devil.

down in the Pine Barrens. That explains it. That makes sense. They'll report to us when they find them. Yes, please. So I had a sighting when I was a kid. Yeah, I know this story. It's very interesting. Tell it again. I'm sure we've told it before, but so I even know the date and I'll explain why in a minute, but it was May 26th, 1987. Not too long after the Northern incident. Right. I was 12 years old and yeah, not too far from, yeah, this one.

So I was 12 years old and I was going to bed about, you know, maybe it was like 10 o'clock at night. And my dad started screaming from the backyard as he was closing the gate to the fence behind the house. He started screaming, Jeff, get out of here right now. Get out of here. And I leapt up because that's not what my dad ever does. And I ran to the back door and I opened the door. I'm like, what's up? And he said, there's a UFO in the sky right there. I swear to God. And so I started walking up the little hill behind our house. I'm like, you're out of your mind. And I turned around and way out in the distance, there was this ring of colored lights that

moving slow as can be. And it was a super overcast night and it just moved so slowly. And it went right over our next door neighbor's house and we stood under it watching, uh,

If it was a starry night, I could have told you if it was solid because the stars would have disappeared as the craft passed between them. But it was an overcast night. Very low hum, but that's it, barely. And we watched this thing until it passed over the tree line and it kept going. And we just couldn't see it anymore because the trees were blocking it. And the next day, the front page of the paper said they had over 200 phone calls. So obviously it wasn't dad and I crazy. Tons of people saw it. Everybody called.

And they said it was a group of Cessnas flying in formation, pulling a prank. Cessnas are a single engine aircraft. They're lawnmowers. They don't stop. No, and they're loud. Yeah. They're very loud. So, uh, I was like, Oh, I don't think that was it. But, Oh, I guess years later, uh, I was doing my 30 odd minute show. And, um,

I had a UFO expert on and he said, "Oh, one of the famous photos is from the I-84 corridor from 1987." And this was taken by a guy from Newtown, Connecticut. Sandy Hook is part of Newtown. And I'm like, "That's the thing we saw." - Wow. - And he had a photo. It was taken by Randy Edding, who was a airline pilot. And we watched this thing, my dad and I, no joke, like two minutes.

which is forever. Two minutes is plenty of time to race in your house, grab a camera, race back out. But we didn't think of it at the time. And we didn't have cell phones back then. You must be kicking yourself. Well, today, you would have just reached into your pocket to your cell phone and started filming, right? And then go, oh, no one's gonna believe this. Not with AI these days. Yeah, but back then, just didn't think of it. But Randy did grab his camera and did take a picture. And when we saw it, I said, dad, look. And group of Cessnas, it is not.

I don't know what it is, but it's not Cessnas. Well, before you go on, the fact that that's what they came up with. Well, right. What a blatant lie. Yeah. It's like, look, I'm no aircraft expert, but I am an expert on knowing what a Cessna looks and sounds like just as you are. I've flown in them before. Anybody that's existed on Earth more than, say, 10 years has heard thousands upon thousands of Cessnas. It has a propeller. They're loud. Yeah. They fly over. It's...

Unmistakable. It's so normal that we don't even see them or hear them sometimes. And again, they don't even stop. They can't stop in the air. They'll fall. They can't hover. They'll stall. Yeah, they couldn't fly that slow. You know, not at the speed we saw. So very suspicious that that's the cover that they came up with. If the official explanation was, hey, there was this like dynamic group of like daredevils that was doing this like...

you know, uh, formation kite thing. Like it would have, I would have been like, Oh, well maybe. Yeah. But don't tell me Cessnas, you know? So, um, yeah, no, that was, that was, I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it. And to have it validated by a photograph decades later, that's pretty cool. And people to send it to my dad and be like, dad, remember? He's like, Oh, that's the thing we saw. Like a perfect circle of lights. And why, Oh, why does it want to draw so much attention to itself?

is the question I have about all these sightings, mine and all the ones we talked about from the 80s.

you know, that's literally flashing neon saying, look at me, look at me, look at me in the sky. Maybe they don't know any better. Maybe they don't know that the planet is inhabited by us. Don't care. They just came down and they're like, nobody's here. What are you going to do about it? Right. Well, that too. I mean, what are you going to do? Yeah. What are you going to do? I could, I can, I zoom out of here so fast. Like you wouldn't even know what hit you. Right. Uh, I guess I, and that's us assuming it's some intelligent life from another planet. And again, I ask, uh,

We are no threat. And I've heard the debates from UFO experts and stuff. We're like, well, we have got nuclear capabilities. We're starting to be able to leave our planet. We might get to Mars. I'm like, sure. But Mars is a long, long way from any other galaxy. We are nowhere near. Who knows how many...

centuries or millennia we are from like building a viable starship that can take us somewhere. Won't be our lifetime for sure. Heck no, no way. Impossible. We're not a threat. And if you have such advanced technology, if you thought we were that dangerous, don't worry about it. Like an asteroid is going to take us out. We're going to kill ourselves first. That, that, we're going to kill it, poison our environment to the point where we can't live in some other species will evolve again. You know, like it's, it's, um,

I just don't think I'd be worried if I lived, you know, eight light years away and I was watching through like some super powerful telescope going, oh, I don't know. They got drones now. And they might not be, I think we always think it's going to be a threat.

Right. Whereas they could be a friendly race. Right. They just want to come down and hang out. Like, check it out. What you got? You got pizza? You got beer? What's that? Right. Exactly. We ruin a whole other planet. They're like, you got to try this stuff. Yeah. And if they are aggressive, and it is true that they have visited our planet, they would have taken us out a long time ago.

It would have been easier then than it is now. And it's probably not that hard now. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. But yeah. I don't see them as a threat. They're observing, if anything. If you could observe another planet, wouldn't you fly your high-tech craft to that planet and observe it? I'd fly over their Super Bowl or whatever their equivalent was. Right. Be like, hey, look at this. This is a big deal. Everybody's watching. How did that affect you, by the way, like in the long run? Did it scare you? No, I wasn't scared at all. Especially when you were younger. I wasn't scared at all. I was like, wow.

And my dad and I love that stuff. We'd watch shows on UFOs and stuff. And so for him, he's like, "I finally saw one my whole life. "That was incredible." And it felt like a gift, sort of. Like, wow, how lucky are we that we were in this place and got to see this thing?

And I've seen a few things since. I remember seeing once, I was in Pennsylvania, and it was a very starry night. And it was a half ring of lights, just white lights, way up high in the sky. Well, that wasn't Starlink, was it? Because people question that. Have you seen that? That's kind of cool. Yes, I have seen Starlink. No, this was in the...

late 80s. Oh, okay. Yeah, a long time ago before any of that stuff. And I know what a satellite looks like. I've seen satellites, you know, where if you can only see them right after sundown. Space station sometimes flies over. It's a bright light that's like it just, but it moves way too fast for a plane. Right. But it's also clearly not a shooting star. Looks like a star. Yeah, but it's just a bright light that just keeps going in one straight direction and then it's, yeah, I've seen that. Like,

Again, I'm not an expert, but I've looked up. Right. Just like you have, just like everybody has, right? We look up and we know what's normal and what's not normal. I've seen comets.

You know, like where you're like, oh, cool, it looks like a little blurry thing. You know, you get your binoculars, it's like, oh, there's a comet. But it's also not really moving. It's not streaking. It looks like it's sort of stationary. It's not, but yeah. So yeah, no, I've seen all the things in the sky that everybody's seen. I've seen Chinese lanterns, you know, where people light those. But that's clearly one light moving in one direction. And, you know, that's it.

So, yeah, you're enough. My point is to anyone who's ever had an experience, you are enough of an expert.

Trust me. You're as much of an expert as anyone else. Anyone else, besides people that might be making some craft that we're not supposed to know about yet. Which I accept. I get it. Like right now, someone's building some craft to do something for military purposes or spy purposes or whatever. And it has to be secretive. And it's got to be a secret. And we're not supposed to know about it, but you've got to test it. And it's one thing to fly it 100 feet above wherever you built it out in the deserts of Arizona or Nevada. Right.

And it's another to say like, all right, let's take this thing for a ride over a city. Right. And see how it reacts and stuff. Like I get that at some point you got to make that test. People, if people do spot it, they're going to say, I don't know what that is. We'll just say it's a Cessna. It's a Cessna. A group of Cessnas flying in formation. Because that makes all the sense in the world. Love it.

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