by Charles Lear
Beginning in October 1987, there was a UFO flap in Wytheville, Virginia. Thousands of people in the area reported seeing extraordinary things in the sky, but the most commonly told story that came out of the flap centers around a single witness who, it seems, was singled out for harassment by some unknown entity or organization.
On October 7, 1987, reporter Danny Gordon of radio station WYVE called the county sheriff, as he regularly did, to see if the sheriff had any news for him that day. The sheriff told Gordon that three deputies, all ex-military, had reported seeing a UFO that day. According to Gordon in the course of his appearance in a segment devoted to the Wytheville flap in Season 4, Episode 18 of Unsolved Mysteries, the story was used as what he calls a “ha-ha” piece at the end of that day’s newscast. Read more
From the days of the earliest citizen UFO investigators, metals associated with UFO reports have been held up as evidence for extraterrestrial visitation. Labs have been employed in testing and claims have been made that the results support a non-earthly origin for the material in question. While some of these claims have been dismissed, others continue to be debated.