MUFON of Ohio

The Mutual UFO Network of Ohio

LETTERS TO M.O.R.A.

From the Ohio UFO Notebook, Summer 1997

Corporal Klinger, the X-Files, and Missing Pilots


Hi Bill (Jones, MORA's Director):

Enclosed is the Fortenberry story (see below) that I offered you a while back... I have a knack for finding references to UFOs in the most unlikely places. A few months ago I was flipping through pages of Jamie Farr's autobiography, For the Farr of It, in a mall bookstore in Toledo. On page 3 or 4, Farr mentions a UFO sighting in the desert on his way to audition for the role of Klinger on "M*A*S*H". He states that the car never worked right after that.

I'd also like to describe an "X-File Moment" at the Mound City Park near Chillicothe, Ohio. In July of 1993, my sister, my two brothers, myself and their kids were returning from a family reunion in Virginia and we decided to stop in Mound City. As we were walking around the complex, toward the rear, one of my nephews yelled, "Hey guys, look at this!". At this vantage point, looking toward the "elliptical mound" with the "Death Mask Mound" directly behind it, the shape was unmistakeable. My first impression was the spaceship in "The Day the Earth Stood Still". It looked like a landed flying saucer. Just a coincidence?

Jerry Hamm
Napoleon, Ohio

UPDATE

Since submitting my letter, I have found a more thorough account of Jamie Farr's UFO sighting on page 101 of Margaret Sachs 1980 book, The UFO Encyclopedia. To paraphrase, Farr and his future wife, Joy, observed a zigzagging light, on a lonely desert road, around midnight, near Yuma Arizona, in the early 1960's, and not in the 70's as my letter implied.

The light moved to within 100 yards of the car and paced it at 60 mph. The UFO was domed with a light swinging around its base, swirling the sand beneath. Joy, who was familiar with the UFO literature, wanted to pull over and try to make contact, but Farr was frightened, and kept driving. The UFO shot off at incredible speed into the distance. Farr did not believe in UFOs prior to this event.

Jerry L. Hamm, jhamm@bright.net

My Website: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Aurora/2677

May 29, 1999


Below is the entire text of the entry:

FARR, JAMIE, actor and Emmy nominee for supporting role in the television series M*A*S*H, who observed a UFO near Yuma, Arizona, in the early 1960s. Farr and his wife-to-be, joy, were driving down a deserted road at about midnight when they caught sight of a light zigzagging across the sky at an incredible speed. It stopped in mid-air, hovered for a while, then took off again at high speed. The UFO approached within one hundred yards of the car, then paced it as Farr maintained a speed of sixty miles per hour. The couple could distinguish a domed apparatus with a light swinging around its base. The desert sand swirled around underneath it. Joy, who had read many books about UFOS, suggested that they should pull over to the side of the road and attempt to make contact. Farr was frightened and kept driving. Suddenly, the UFO took off at phenomenal speed and vanished in the distance. Farr, who did not believe in UFOs prior to the incident, now believes they are spaceships from another PLANET, possibly from another galaxy.

From The UFO encyclopedia, by Margaret Sachs, 1980

Thanks for your time,

Jerry

The Fortenberry Story



Jerry's "article" on William H. Fortenberry comes from a book entitled "The Probable Cause..." by Robert J. Serling (brother of award winning TV sci-fi writer Rod Serling). The book, published in 1962, discusses various aircraft disasters, including the loss of Pan American World Airways Clipper Flight 944 in November of 1957. Earlier, in 1952 William Fortenberry was a crew member aboard a New York-Miami Pan American DC-4 who spotted a UFO while in flight. The sighting received world wide attention. On the 1957 flight, he was the second officer when the aircraft dissapeared on a flight over the Pacific from California to Hawaii. The cause of the aircraft's loss was never determined and the aircraft was never found, given the technology for the period, unlike what occurred when TWA Flight 800 was lost in 1996.


Another aircraft pilot with an interest in UFOs was lost on April 6, 1958 when Captain William Joseph Hull was killed when the aircraft he was piloting into Saginaw, Michigan stalled upon landing. He had earlier sighted "a brilliant meteor" while flying a commercial aircraft on November 14, 1956. He and his co-pilot sighted what he described in the NICAP publication, The UFO Investigator, as "an intense blue-white light, approximately seven or eight times as bright as Venus when this planet is at it's brightest magnitude". He wrote that the unidentified object began a series of maneuvers, "sharper than any known aircraft, sometimes changing direction 90 degrees in an instant". "It finally zoomed up at an extremely steep angle and flew out of sight", he added. "The one thing I can't get over is the fact that when it came it came steeply downward and when it departed after it's amazing show, it went steeply upward," Captain Hull Reported.

All of this makes one wonder what has happened in the lives of the many people who have sighted UFOs. It also makes us all aware that UFO related information can be found in many unexpected places. Maybe the answer to the UFO mystery can be found in your local library.


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