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Westall incident 50 years on

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The video below has a workaround for firefox and chrome, it should play despite it looking like its not available lol



 
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mike said:
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This is an excellent and seemingly quite rare bit of media coverage of ufo's. There is no debunking voice but more of an informed and thoughtful examination of the topic. The story as related by witnesses and investigator is highly compelling.

Aside from the great number of witnesses there are three very intriguing features that command further inquiry. The rapid deployment of military agents and clampdown on the event, including the burning of the paddock destroying landing evidence let's you know this was a very significant and unusual event requiring a deep silencing that cut across all levels of society. But there are some very unanswered questions that I haven't been able to find good follow up on:
  • what actually happened to Tracy who was first on the scene, taken away by ambulance and then reports of her never having lived in her home are bizarre at best. Supposedly she was contacted in the future and does not want to speak to the event. Who moved in to her house and what did the neighbours have to say? This is a very loose but critical thread.
  • the reports of the multiple Cessnas circling the object, or small planes without engines, are also suspiciously strange. Were they or were they not Cessnas - what's the follow up here? This is a big disconnect.
  • the discussion in articles about there being two human men up close and one entering the object sounds like very loose and unconfirmed evidence - one in white coveralls and another in a similar but blue uniform with insignia? Did this actually transpire?
What's unfortunate about these very compelling cases that burst onto the media stage in their own time period and continue to speak loudly today is that we look at them across the distance of time making it difficult to determine the difference between the accumulated mythology around the event and what actually happened. But even if you strip back what might be doubtful or elaborated aspects of the story the kernel of it is still riveting. Conflicting stories from witnesses remind us how inaccurate human witnesses can be under stress. That does not lessen the merit of this case, but only further complicates it.

@mike, you might have access or know better what are the definitive answers to some of the above questions. Do these get treated in subsequent documentaries as I have a vague memory of researching the Tracy incident years ago and it not really being properly resolved in the doc from 2010 but reading that it's not at as conspiratorial as reported in this Studio 10 media segment.
 
In truth i was les than a month old when this incident occured, so i only know whats available in clips like this.

But i find it to be one of the more compelling australian cases, multiple witnesess and documented Govt responses.

Its interesting to note that the chanel 9 news footage mysteriously disapeared from their archives and they dont know how or where it went.

The fact that the witnesses still maintain "i know what i saw" 50 years later, speaks to an event that burned itself into their memories.

I can only speculate on Tracy. The Witness knew where she lived, knew her parents only spoke czechoslovakian.
I have some doubts she doesnt remember the event since all the others do so vividly. I can speculate that since she was sent to a convent, she and her parents did, as is reasonably common in some of these events, place a religious significance on the matter. Its unfortunate but we know some strongly religious people dont believe in ET and fall back on the demons explanation. Perhaps thats what happened in her case. Certainly being bundled off to a convent after the event might be consistant with that scenario.

Its to be hoped we can finally learn more about this case, at least from the perspective of the Govts involvement and conclusions. We know it was heavily involved and Australian law has a statute of 50 years secrecy on events like this.

Any time after May this year FOI requests cant be knocked back on that basis at least.
 
I used to get the Westall incident and the Ariel School incident mixed up. I think everyone is familiar with Ariel. Here's a link for those that may be interested;
 
The above doc is excellent for its detailed research. I had forgotten McDonald is referenced in here which prompted me to look for that. This document has all the relevant source material and articles including a summary of McDonald interviewing the teacher Greenwood who was threatened by the silencers with allegations of being an alcoholic, and becsuse you can't see UFO's as they don't exist - classic.

This case has such rich levels of detail. All the efforts of silencing the community and witnesses appears to be comprehensive. I doubt very much all that excitement and concerted efforts to delete all recorded information including the tv station film reel has anything to do with balloons.

What's a really interesting indicator is the rapid response of military types on the ground and the planes chasing the UFO in the sky. Again, not really balloon material right? Still, it's quite curious, how quickly the response team arrived. Whoever they were, they were obviously tracking this object and ready to engage it and then erase all evidence of its appearance. That's all fairly indicting and revelatory. You just don't hear about this kind of case at all anymore and seems to belong to a different era of ufology. Anyone else got any skeptical possibilities for what it was this prepared and organized response team was hunting?

Good Westall info: http://www.project1947.com/kbcat/kbwestall.htm
 
Forgive me if I am wrong, it's late and I've not had a chance to watch the video (though I've seen this case covered on a number of docu's). I just wanted to point out something that marks this case as being similar but also maybe a little 'better' than the Ruwa, Zimbabwe event and that is simply that the Zimbabwe case involved only children actually seeing a craft (and seeing a couple of beings which itself is an amazing detail) whilst the Westall case had numerous kids and some adults simultaneously seeing the craft. Now, I'd love to know exactly what was said - threatened? - to the teachers and pupils at Westall that was so successful at putting a decent lid on the case for some time. I mean, I've never seen file footage of contemporary interviews with any of the kids or teachers, only latter-day interviews with the now-grown-up children. I could be wrong on that and if so, please correct me.

But regardless, Ruwa and Westall are without doubt in my personal top 10 cases. Maybe not on hard evidence but maybe more on 'debunking difficulty' and also I love the fact that it seems to have been most deliberate to 'target' these primary schools. Was there a reason that high schools were not given the same treatment? I refuse to put it just down to chance. Whatever or whomever may be behind the visit, I'm sure they knew exactly what they wanted to achieve. We will probably never know but I wonder if the craft occupants continued to have some influence on the later lives of some of those kids? Food for thought anyway. Worthy thread indeed Mike.
 
mike said:
In truth i was les than a month old when this incident occured, so i only know whats available in clips like this.

But i find it to be one of the more compelling australian cases, multiple witnesess and documented Govt responses.

Its interesting to note that the chanel 9 news footage mysteriously disapeared from their archives and they dont know how or where it went.

The fact that the witnesses still maintain "i know what i saw" 50 years later, speaks to an event that burned itself into their memories.

I can only speculate on Tracy. The Witness knew where she lived, knew her parents only spoke czechoslovakian.
I have some doubts she doesnt remember the event since all the others do so vividly. I can speculate that since she was sent to a convent, she and her parents did, as is reasonably common in some of these events, place a religious significance on the matter. Its unfortunate but we know some strongly religious people dont believe in ET and fall back on the demons explanation. Perhaps thats what happened in her case. Certainly being bundled off to a convent after the event might be consistant with that scenario.

Its to be hoped we can finally learn more about this case, at least from the perspective of the Govts involvement and conclusions. We know it was heavily involved and Australian law has a statute of 50 years secrecy on events like this.

Any time after May this year FOI requests cant be knocked back on that basis at least.
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What's captivating about the Tracy part of the story is that those that were first on the seen passed out and one is whisked away in an ambulance. What else was seen by these early responders and would a balloon have caused such distress? The sending off to a convent is still dramatic and one wonders what might have been said to that family if the young teacher was threatened with being labelled an alcoholic creating career destruction.

What about the HIBAL balloon and its payload as a source? The description of that does not match witness descriptions nor does it warrant the silence clampdown, theft of a evidence, the public community meeting etc. These appear to be incongruent. However it does answer the immediate response of army and air. Are there other cases in the history of Aussie Ufology with similar rapid response teams and silencing protocols?
 
I was thinking of something earlier today; if iPhones (and the infrastructure) were around way back when, the fact that flying saucers from another world would be proven 100x over. The Hill's, Travis Walton, Ariel School, Westall. Every kid and teacher would have pulled out their phones and starting recording/taking pictures. It's funny nowadays that these types of cases don't really happen. Now that we have the technology to capture it on media so that everyone on the planet would be in the know, these types of events don't happen.

Reminds me of religion, God and the bible; all these miraculous things supposedly happened (Red Sea parting, woman getting turned into a pillar of salt, walking on water, etc.). But once the modern age arrived and cameras are available to record any such event so that then it would be indisputable that God exists, the events stop happening altogether. Just seems rather odd, IMO.
 
Goggs Mackay said:
it seems to have been most deliberate to 'target' these primary schools.
Click to expand...

Exactly one year after Westall, on April 6, 1967, a teacher and some students at the Crestview Elementary School in Florida saw a UFO in the sky. The next day the following events occurred (synopsis from the NICAP report):

April 7, 1967; Opa Locka, Florida
10:00 a.m. Children at Crestview Elementary School saw an object which appeared in a tree-dotted field behind the school. The next 10 minutes were chaotic. Mrs. Virginia Martin, a sixth grade teacher, said that there was a lot of excitement. She wasn't paying any attention to what the children were pointing to at first, but was trying to set them lined up (to watch). Most of the 200 girls and boys at morning recess were running towards the school ground fence, yelling and pointing. Mrs. Martin, fourth grade teacher Bob Apfal, and sixth grade instructor Miss Marian Waters spotted the oval-shaped object hovering behind a pine tree in an open field. It seemed to move in toward the school, then went straight back and dropped below a pine tree. It then came up again and went westward. Teacher Bob Apfal exhibited no qualms. "lt was a flying saucer." This was the second consecutive day he and his class had seen similar, metallic like objects north of the school grounds.The teachers spent Friday afternoon talking to three Air Force investigators who drove to the school from Homestead Air Force Base. Andy Cohen (who said there were two objects) became the closest to a consensus spokesman for the kids, sat in a car and told what he saw : "They looked like long cigars. They were flying apart one at a time. Some of the girls got hysterical when they saw them." Later in the day it was discovered that the UFO sightings were not limited to the children and teachers at Crestview. Mrs. Mary Troesser, called at the Herald to inquire about any "strange sightings". Mrs. Troesser had been out in the yard and happened to glance in the direction of Crestview Elementary School. "There was this oval object with red lights just over the trees . . ".

Sightings continued on the following day, which was a Saturday. The NICAP report also contains links to news articles and the Blue Book report. UFO Report

Unfortunately there does not seem to be as much recent information out there on the Crestview case as on Westall and Ariel School, or even the Welsh Broad Haven case (are there other schoolyard mass sighting cases?). Leading Westall researcher Shane Ryan said on his Facebook page a few years that he had begun researching Crestview, and had contacted and interviewed some of the witnesses. I’m not aware of the results of that. A few years ago one of the student witnesses did post a description of what he recalled.
http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/079/S79510.html

There was a rough dramatization of the Crestview case on the Close Encounters TV show, starting at the 10:45 mark (I hate the sound effects this show attaches to its recreated UFOs). As a result of copyright restrictions, I’m not sure this video is viewable everywhere. It’s season 2, episode 2.
 
Australian UFO researcher Paul Dean discusses Keith Basterfield's suggestion that the Westall UFO was a Project HIBAL secret scientific payload suspended from a parachute. During the discussion Dean refers to a taped interview conducted by Dr. James McDonald. Notes from that interview are in the link that Burnt posted above.
Burnt State said:
Good Westall info: http://www.project1947.com/kbcat/kbwestall.htm
Click to expand...

Paul Dean discussing Westall beginning at 45:00.
187. Paul Dean
 
Of course CGL, there is another explanation in modern Ufology and that is-accepting a non-nuts n bolts explanation firstly- that whatever is behind the phenomenon, it shows exactly what it wants us to see, no more, no less - in fact one could argue that every single sighting of whatever craft in whatever situation, even aliens being seen etc, it's all by 'their' design and as such, as modern tech evolves and becomes smaller and cheaper, ostensibly making the capturing of countless great photos ever more likely, rather than the field gaining more evidence, it seems to be just as ever - just out of reach.

It definitely seems that types of UFO change with the times and so do reported close encounters, in fact it seems there are far, far less close-up landings, strange interactions with beings etc. I do not doubt cases such as Delphos, Kansas or Soccoro, New Mexico. Both are amazing witness and physical evidence cases that are extremely hard to debunk and it personally saddens me that in these days of iPhones etc these kind of cases seem to be reported much less. Will we ever get another Westall or Ruwa? Imagine a modern day elementary or middle school with a bloody great saucer landing at the edge of the sports field with 100+ youngsters crowding round for a long look? It would be on Youtube and Twitter etc in seconds - this being something the phenomena, I think, does not wish to happen yet, and so the phenomena stops putting on such shows. There must be very few schools worldwide where absolutely no kids have a camera phone. Even in very poor countries cellphone ownership is commonplace. Perhaps some Innuit-type people in Siberia, who have no network access, may be the last of people to whom an amazing landing display could still happen without the world getting real-time proof.

Even if someone is still resolutely nuts n bolts, such as Stan Friedman I think, it's easy to think any UFO occupants watching the Earth will be aware of our technology advances and seeing how they don't seem to wish to 'land on the Whitehouse lawn' yet, I doubt they wish to provide easy evidence. Which, for those of us in love with this field, is a real shame because it reduces the likelihood of any of us getting a class-A sighting of a daylight disc for instance. It seems high-altitude night-time shenanigans and simple but still amazing lights in the sky are the order of the day for now....I wonder if world governments put together a worldwide UFO-spotting grid of infra-red and night-vision cameras etc, maybe the phenomena will evolve even more into a form that makes such a grid impotent. It's always one step ahead it seems.
 
Goggs Mackay said:
Of course CGL, there is another explanation in modern Ufology and that is-accepting a non-nuts n bolts explanation firstly- that whatever is behind the phenomenon, it shows exactly what it wants us to see, no more, no less - in fact one could argue that every single sighting of whatever craft in whatever situation, even aliens being seen etc, it's all by 'their' design and as such, as modern tech evolves and becomes smaller and cheaper, ostensibly making the capturing of countless great photos ever more likely, rather than the field gaining more evidence, it seems to be just as ever - just out of reach.

It definitely seems that types of UFO change with the times and so do reported close encounters, in fact it seems there are far, far less close-up landings, strange interactions with beings etc. I do not doubt cases such as Delphos, Kansas or Soccoro, New Mexico. Both are amazing witness and physical evidence cases that are extremely hard to debunk and it personally saddens me that in these days of iPhones etc these kind of cases seem to be reported much less. Will we ever get another Westall or Ruwa? Imagine a modern day elementary or middle school with a bloody great saucer landing at the edge of the sports field with 100+ youngsters crowding round for a long look? It would be on Youtube and Twitter etc in seconds - this being something the phenomena, I think, does not wish to happen yet, and so the phenomena stops putting on such shows. There must be very few schools worldwide where absolutely no kids have a camera phone. Even in very poor countries cellphone ownership is commonplace. Perhaps some Innuit-type people in Siberia, who have no network access, may be the last of people to whom an amazing landing display could still happen without the world getting real-time proof.

Even if someone is still resolutely nuts n bolts, such as Stan Friedman I think, it's easy to think any UFO occupants watching the Earth will be aware of our technology advances and seeing how they don't seem to wish to 'land on the Whitehouse lawn' yet, I doubt they wish to provide easy evidence. Which, for those of us in love with this field, is a real shame because it reduces the likelihood of any of us getting a class-A sighting of a daylight disc for instance. It seems high-altitude night-time shenanigans and simple but still amazing lights in the sky are the order of the day for now....I wonder if world governments put together a worldwide UFO-spotting grid of infra-red and night-vision cameras etc, maybe the phenomena will evolve even more into a form that makes such a grid impotent. It's always one step ahead it seems.
Click to expand...
important observations and worth examining. what other reasons could there be for a lack of up close and personal encounters on grand scales with regards to our increased ability to record such objects? historically just how frequent are good closer encounter cases anyways?

if, however, our ability to capture images of such objects is tied to our ability to experience such objects then the other thing i wonder about, is whether or not there is a need to give credit to an unknown, 'alien' agent? what if our ability to see such objects is directly tied to our ability to record them? perhaps these objects are things that can only be experienced as opposed to recorded concretely, or at least have recordings that match what was seen. (too bad about the camera confiscation at Westall.) i still see no evidence of any real verifiable photographic evidence of a ufo - just a lot of speculation and hoaxes. however, the blobs of light ones probably intrigue me the most as opposed to all those metallic 1950's drive in ufo pics history is replete with.

the Crestview case is spectacular - forgot entirely about that one, and the Broad Haven one is indicative I think of how you can see how word of mouth can create its own fever amongst the crowd and perhaps suggestibility starts to create control? this does not mean nothing is there but may help to explain why they see what they see.

but, I have to say, what is stunning about the Crestview case is the blasting into the tree and subsequent emergence from the tree - what a moment of surreal splendour. I mean that takes you right back directly to Hynek's final musing on UFO's as Tree Spirits. But when you consider the notion of intentionality, and whether or not there is an intelligence outside of us in operation then we have to consider these school sightings, like many UFO events as potentially educational moments. There's a major piece of education taking place here around dimensions, technology, life forms, energy, states of matter not to mention the wonders of nature and all honour to the trees that we are so quickly deforesting. Not to get all space brother here but the UFO often seems to pose technical questions about the nature of reality as we perceive it according to the limited laws of physics that we have built.
 
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