This report was prepared by
me in 1990 and was based largely on material supplied by Patrick Ferryn, cofounder
of the Belgian UFO research organization SOBEPS (Societe Belge D'Etude Des
Phenomenes Spatiaux). A similar version was published that year in the MUFON
UFO Journal.
For those not familiar with
Belgium, it is one of the smallest and most densely populated countries in
Europe. It is about a third the size of the state of Indiana and, with a population
of more than ten million, has almost twice as many people.
It is bounded on the northwest
by the North Sea, on the north and northeast by The Netherlands, on the east
by West Germany, on the southeast by Luxembourg, and on the west and southwest
by France.
* * *
For at least eight months beginning
in October 1989, Belgium experienced almost daily sightings of large triangular-shaped
UFOs similar to those reported throughout the United States on countless occasions
since the mid-1970s.
As of late May 1990, the Belgian
UFO research group SOBEPS had investigated 
about
six hundred fifty cases, collecting reports from more than nine hundred witnesses,
many of them highly competent professional people.
(The SOBEPS investigators accumulated an incredible amount of information on the sightings. In 1994 they published their findings in two thick volumes totaling nearly a thousand pages, Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique, Un Dossier Exceptionnel and Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique, Une Énigme Non Résolue.)
It is estimated that at least
ten thousand Belgians saw the UFOs, described at times as being “as big as
or bigger than an aircraft carrier."
In many respects the sightings
paralleled those reported in the Hudson Valley area of New York State and
Connecticut just north of New York city in 1983-1986, as reported in the book
NIGHT SIEGE: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings (by Dr. J. Allen Hynek,
Philip J. Imbrogno and Bob Pratt, Ballantine Books, 1987, and the revised
and expanded edition published by Llewellyn in 1998).
GOVERNMENT COOPERATES IN INVESTIGATION
In what at that time was probably
unique in the history of worldwide ufology, the Belgian government assisted
SOBEPS in investigating the sightings.
The Ministry of the Interior
ordered the Gendarmerie Nationale (a combination of police and army, many
of whose members reported seeing the UFOs) to give SOBEPS copies of all UFO
reports and to immediately advise SOBEPS of new sightings.
In addition, the Ministry of
Defense, through the Belgian Air Force, authorized SOBEPS to contact radar
specialists, pilots and installations. In an unheard of 
display
of cooperation, the Air Force even had two military aircraft and their crews
on standby at Bierset Airport, near Liege, to work with SOBEPS during the
long, four-day Easter weekend in 1990.
"One of these aircraft,
a Hawker Siddeley 748, was equipped with an impressive infrared video camera,"
said Ferryn, then a television director and producer. "We also had professional
video equipment and sophisticated instruments.
“On the ground and in the whole
eastern and southern part of Belgium we had teams with CB radios and mobile
phones. Last but not least, an important Air Force radar station at Glons
was connected with our improvised headquarters in the Bierset Airport."
Briefly, this is what happened:
● The sightings started
in October 1989 near Eupen, close to the Dutch and German border, and then
progressed steadily westward to Liege, Namur, Wavre (just southeast of the
capital, Brussels), Mons and finally toward the French border. The area involved
is about a hundred miles 
long.
● Most of the sightings
were at night but a few were in the daytime. Many were CE-I's and CE-II's.
● Among the witnesses
were nearly two hundred members and officers of the Gendarmerie Nationale
as well as policemen, military and civilian pilots, air traffic controllers,
meteorologists, aeronautical engineers and physicists.
● Most of the witnesses
reported seeing a dark, triangular-shaped object with three bright lights
and a red flashing light in the middle. Often, people saw one or more rows
of scintillating lights on the side of the triangle.
● Several times highly
competent witnesses used such expressions as "as big as a football field"
or "huge" or "massive" to describe the UFO. Some even
said it was "as big as or bigger than an aircraft carrier." When
seen from the side in profile, the object was described as "very high"
with large “windows.”
● One witness said that "while the object was flying slowly
directly overhead, one could not see the front part and the end at the same
time because it was too big."
● Some triangular-shaped objects were "modest" in size,
only about as large as small aircraft.
● Often an object hovered for minutes at a time. When it began moving,
it usually moved very slowly, too slow to be a conventional airplane. However,
at times it would suddenly accelerate so rapidly that it would be across the
horizon in a second or two – and sometimes it would flash right back.
● The object was nearly always noiseless or made only a faint humming
sound, like an electric engine or a sewing machine.
● Many times while hovering or moving slowly it would pivot, turning
90 degrees and even 180 degrees.
● In three cases (as also reported by some witnesses in the Hudson
Valley sightings), people saw structures underneath "with heavy metal
parts, crisscross effects, diamond shape work, and tubular things here and
there."
● Some people claimed to have seen triangles that changed shape
into a round light which later opened, releasing a great number of small red
objects going in all directions, and then change into a triangle again.
● Very often, sightings
occurred in densely populated areas and also near illuminated highways and
expressways, just as happened in the Hudson Valley sightings. Said Ferryn:
"As I visited the Hudson Valley and the Connecticut area two years ago
(for archaeological purposes), I can say the landscapes are very similar to
what one can see around Eupen, Liege, Namur, etc."
● Some witnesses said
they signaled with their car lights and the UFO would respond with a similar
light signal or by moving at the moment the signal was made.
One of the biggest nights of
sightings was November 29, 1989 when several UFOs were seen by hundreds of
people around Eupen. SOBEPS collected nearly one hundred twenty reports from
this night alone.
LIGHT BEAM HITS PATROL CAR
The first important sighting
that night came from the Gendarmerie. Two officers in their patrol car were
lit up by a beam of light coming from a dark triangle equipped with three
"projectors" and a winking red light. The object was huge and made
a faint humming sound. It was hovering at an altitude of six hundred to nine
hundred feet.
One officer said the light
was so dazzling "that we could read a newspaper under it."
The object then moved slowly
in the direction of the nearby La Gileppe Dam, where it hovered for forty-five
minutes. It then moved southwest about thirteen miles and hovered over the
city of Spa for thirty minutes before disappearing.
In their investigation, SOBEPS researchers learned that a number of other
people had seen the UFO even earlier that evening.
One was a Gendarmerie officer on duty on the third floor of the Eupen
station who saw a luminous rectangular object about sixty-five feet long between
him and the rear wall of the station six hundred fifty feet away. It was just
below the level of his eyes and was moving very slowly.
"It was like a big chamber," he said.
Astonished, he watched it drift
slowly out of sight and immediately radioed two officers in a patrol car who
were in the area it was heading for. Several minutes later they saw it coming
in their direction and they could see the underside of it.
The two officers told SOBEPS
it was triangular in shape and that when it moved a "balancing movement"
was clearly noted, during which a sort of dome was visible on the upper side.
One of the officers said he
had never seen anything so beautiful in his life, and as he spoke he was very
affected and seemed about to weep.
EIGHT FAST-MOVING OBJECTS
Another important night of
sightings took place on March 30, 1990. That evening, fifteen members of the
Gendarmerie on duty in different places around Wavre (about fifteen miles
southeast of Brussels) saw eight white luminous objects in the sky that were
three to five times larger than a star. The objects moved away and then came
back very fast, glowing red as they returned.
The commander of the Gendarmerie
station at Wavre alerted the Air Force radar station at Glons and the Air
Force base at Beauvechain. Two F-16s immediately came into the sighting area
(and later an AWACS aircraft) and were literally guided by witnesses on the
ground.
The next day newspapers reported
that the F-16s "came home with an empty bag," but that was not true.
After weeks of computer analysis, the Belgian Air Force Headquarters reported
to the Ministry of Defense that FIVE different military radars (two on the
F-16s and three radar stations) had detected unidentified echos at the same
moment and in the same place indicated by witnesses on the ground.
Furthermore, the report confirmed
that the objects had moved with incredible speeds.
Details of that report appeared
on TV and in newspapers on May 19 – coincidentally the anniversary of the
1986 overflights in Brazil when six military jet fighters chased (and sometimes
were chased by) twenty to thirty UFOs that were being tracked on radar by
air traffic controllers over vast areas of the country.
The sightings in Belgium on
November 29, 1989 created a sensation and were heavily publicized by the press,
TV and radio. SOBEPS was immediately snowed under with reports and opened
a UFO Hotline – just as Philip Imbrogno and his investigative team did in
Connecticut during the early heavy sightings in 1983.
"People called literally
at all hours of the day and night," Ferryn said. "It is striking
to see how, at one and the same time, a great part of the public and the press
have reacted to these events exactly in the same way here and in the U.S.
(as reported in NIGHT SIEGE)."
Some of those calling did report
what later turned out to be conventional aircraft. However, Ferryn said, most
of the witnesses were familiar with civilian and military aircraft because
there are many bases in the area, and they were certain they were not seeing
aircraft.
STEALTH FIGHTER RUMORS
"We all went through the
same stages of thinking," Ferryn said. "We first thought of ultra
light aircraft, then military aircraft, the mystery plane, the phantom fliers
(a kind of 'Black Baron,' as we called it) and so on.
“Of course, some officials
and specialists claimed astronomical mistakes, holograms, lasers, temperature
inversions and so on. We must admit we also wondered at first if it could
be some sort of sophisticated ultra light aircraft. Of course, now, none of
these hypotheses make any sense."
There were numerous rumors
that the American-built F-117 Stealth Fighter was being flown in Belgian skies.
The rumors were partially confirmed by the French newspaper VSV on April 21
in an interview with U.S. Air Force Col. Tom Tolin.
He reportedly told the newspaper:
"F-117s are flying in Europe during night missions, sometimes piloted
by United Kingdom Royal Air Force pilots, but we are not authorized to tell
you where."
The journalist's theory, of
course, was that the UFOs that had been seen since October were actually the
F-117s. If F-117s were flown over Belgium, that could account for some sightings
but not for the reports of huge triangular-shaped objects that hovered or
moved slowly, suddenly accelerated and disappeared across the horizon in seconds,
or released hundreds of small red objects that flew in all directions.
With so much UFO activity,
SOBEPS was able to collect twenty-five different video tapes made during the
sightings.
"Three of these are really
interesting for they clearly show what is undeniably NOT a conventional aircraft
or anything else known," said Ferryn. "As a professional in this
field, I have enlarged and treated the interesting sequences in slow motion
with sophisticated equipment.
“One film shows three important
spots of light forming a big triangle having a red flashing light in the center.
It flew slowly low over our capital on March 30, the same date the fifteen
Gendarmes of Wavre saw the eight objects southeast of Brussels."
SOBEPS also had some photographs
"but they are extremely disappointing because either nothing shows or
what is seen doesn't correspond with the sightings," said Ferryn. "Only
one of these shows what could be a triangle or a trapezoidal-shaped object,
while it was observed as being rounded and ray shaped."
A GLOBAL PHENOMENON
The Brazilian military had
a similar experience in 1977 when it was investigating a long series of sightings
around the small town of Colares at the mouth of
the Amazon River just north of the major city of Belem.
(The sightings are discussed
by Jacques Vallee in CONFRONTATIONS: A Scientist’s Search for Alien
Contact, Ballantine Books 1990, as well as my own book, UFO DANGER
ZONE, Terror and Death in Brazil – Where Next? Horus House Press, 1996.)
A Brazilian Air Force team
spent approximately four months in the area, during which they shot hundreds
of photographs and motion picture films of UFOs. The officer in charge said
he and his men photographed nine different shapes of UFOs, including several
that were triangular or like a pyramid.
Other aspects of the Belgian
sightings have been reported in other countries as well, proving once again,
as we all know, that this is a global phenomenon.
One Belgian witness said that
when the UFO was overhead, he could not see both the front and back at the
same time because it was so huge. In the Hudson Valley sightings, a security
officer at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Reactor at Buchanan, New York, reported
much the same thing.
On the night of July 24, 1984,
a huge triangular-shaped object hovered over the reactor for ten minutes and
the officer, watching it on the monitor of a security camera mounted atop
a ninety-five-foot pole, had to pan the camera 180 degrees to scan the entire
object from front to back.
Another point of similarity
is the incredible acceleration. Some Belgian witnesses said the UFO would
shoot off across the horizon in a second or two, and sometimes come back just
as fast. In Colusa, California, in 1976 a witness reported seeing a UFO suddenly
shoot across the sky to a far away mountain and then return just as quickly.
In 1977 two Memphis policemen
watching a large triangular UFO hover over a golf course said it disappeared
over the horizon in two seconds. During the Hudson Valley sightings in 1983-86,
one witness saw a triangular-shaped UFO vanish across the horizon in seconds,
and in another sighting a couple said a boomerang-shaped object "streaked
from one end of the sky to the other, and then back again in a split second."
In the United States in the
1970s, a number of people, including military personnel, reported seeing UFOs
shoot from near the ground far out into the sky and vanish in seconds.
BOOMERANG SIGHTINGS
Similar actions were reported
in the small city of Pinheiro, in northern Brazil,
where sightings occurred nearly every night for four months in 1977. The mayor
said the UFO, a large, fiery red ball of light that often hovered about a
thousand feet above the town, would sometimes suddenly shoot so far out into
the atmosphere as be lost among the stars, and at times it would shoot straight
back down to earth again.
The enormous sizes reported
in Belgium have become common and are typical of the triangular or boomerang-shaped
objects reported in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Iran and elsewhere.
The Belgian reports are exciting for many reasons, but especially because
of the numerous high quality witnesses and the official government cooperation,
and because they affirm once again the reality of the phenomenon.
* * *
Members of SOBEPS are very
interested in learning about sightings elsewhere in the world similar to those
occurring in Belgium. The organization is also encouraging and inviting researchers
around the world to join in a greater, freer exchange of UFO data.
"I'm definitely convinced
we must exchange and share information," said SOBEPS cofounder Patrick
Ferryn. "And this is an encouragement and a warm request to do so. Of
course, we already exchange publications and bulletins, but this is not enough."
In addition to printed reports
(its reports are in French), SOBEPS is interested in exchanging videotapes,
films and photos. Write to: SOBEPS, Avenue Paul Janson 74, 1070 Bruxelles,
Belgium. The SOBEPS web site (in French and English) is www.sobeps.org.
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