Tag Archives: childhood family dairy farm

Back when I turned a TV into a Radar to track UFOs and Airplanes

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A young teenager reaches out and up with a science experiment

As a child I read extensively. Not only the classics, but being intensely curious and living way out in the middle of rural farm country Virginia, reading kept me connected to the wider world. Read not only the classics but books on all topics. The great classics of literature. Books on the sciences from physics to biology. Lots of history and politics, especially the history of wars and battles. Books on different religions. Thrillers! Mysteries! Horror! And lots and lots of science fiction, especially stories set in Outer Space with the characters using amazing gadgets and fantastic inventions. Also read lots of books on what we called “Aliens and flying saucers” back then. Today we use the terms UAP and NHIs for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena and Non-Human Intelligences. At the same time I watched as much science fiction on television as I was able to in a rural area where we were lucky enough to pick up two or three channels really well and sometimes four. At some point I developed the madcap idea of wiring a walkie talkie into an old black and white TV to see what would happen. Wanted to communicate with and track flying objects overhead … and maybe even find UFOs! Continue reading →

Orbs, Ball Lightning, and Cows

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High Strangeness in the Skies too close to the Ground

Soon after men working on my Dad’s farm swore they saw two small “flying saucer” UFOs with colored lights zoom between the two silos attached to the outside of the cowbarn, ball lightning knocked down all the cows. At least we think those orbs were ball lightning, but we weren’t completely certain. Now we are sure at all. These events occurred on Riverview Dairy Farm near the village of Rice in Prince Edward County where we lived in the rolling Piedmont region of Virginia. Ours was one of three Bass farms in the region, altho the small one belonging to my great-great grandfather was long defunct.

This was sometime during the mid-1970s when I was in high school over in Farmville. My brother Joe and I played with the three Vernon brothers and the two Moore brothers. Their fathers worked the local dairy farms milking cows, fixing machinery, and throwing hay. Recently we thought we had seen a flying saucer UFO while out exploring in the woods one evening. The more we studied the machine and its light patterns high in the sky, however, we realized it was a common, small airplane viewed upon the steep angle of the land as we climbed out of a steep gully into the field. One can read about that incident in my article here, “The UFO that wasn’t.”

Apparently the farmers, hardened men not incline to make up nonsensical stories, saw two small UFOs. They were described as little flying saucers, silver or aluminum-colored, with a ring of colored lights around the outer rim of their discs. The saucers flew over the farm from the south somewhere. Then they turned quickly on a hard right turn and shot thru the narrow gap between the two silos over the high, tin roof of the cowbarn. Those two machines behaved as if they were performing, indeed, as one man declared, “showing off.” Once thru, both accelerated and vanished. They were so fast it wasn’t clear if they disappeared because they flew on out of view or winked out of visible existence. Was daytime and the sky was clear with a few clouds.  Continue reading →

Finding Childhood’s UFO Sphere Picture

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Hunting down a long-ago Machine of Ghosts

Image of metallic spherical UFO/UAP found online that closely resembled the one the Bass Family saw over their Virginia farm in the late 1960s. The only difference is the sphere witnessed by the author’s family was silvery and stainless steel in color.

When I first came upon the image recreating what a particular spherical UFO/UAP looked like from a particular event, I felt exhilaration! It’s the first clear, uncluttered image of exactly what I remember what the UFO looked like my entire immediate family of origin witnessed near our home in rural Virginia during the late 1960s. I was an elementary school farm boy back then, and yet I recall the event as clear as if it happened yesterday. Continue reading →