The Valley Alabama UFO Photographs were anonymously sent to a local radio station and newspaper, with six photos of a UFO hovering over a farm pasture.
The Valley Alabama UFO Photographs 1996
An anonymous source provided six images of a capsule-shaped UFO hovering over a farm pasture to a local radio station and newspaper.
The source claims to have taken the fantastic UFO pictures on September 16, 1996, in a letter that included the pictures.
The photographer claims his dog began barking while fixing a fence on his property.
As he walked over to where his dog was, he saw a low-flying, capsule-shaped UFO hovering and slowly moving over one of his cow pastures.
Each picture shows a UFO that looks like the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft that the US launched at the beginning of its space program.
The black to dark green cone-shaped capsule expands to reveal a black, Teflon-like covered bottom and a flange or rim that circles the top of the unidentified object.
Researchers who have looked at the photos claim that the UFO is depicted in each shot at a slightly different position and elevation, making it more challenging to fake.
The Valley Alabama UFO Photographs became public
On September 26, 1996, TV-33 in Lagrange, Georgia, broadcasted the first time the public saw pictures and a copy of the letter.
The hosts of the “Heston & Steve” program, Heston Yates and Steve Smoots, Jimmy Smith, and John C. Thompson, field investigators for the International Society for Ufo Research (ISUR), opined on the integrity of the UFO photos.
They all concurred that they were very peculiar and skillful if the photos were a hoax.
On the program, Mr. Thompson stated that the photos “most favorably impressed” him.
Since then, he has added that he has two witnesses who saw objects with a similar shape in May and July in the LaGrange region, which is only 20 miles from Valley.
Unbelievably, a witness he has located claims that he and others witnessed the same craft in Atlanta 25 years prior.
HR Smith, a veteran investigator and confirmed UFO witness, said the images appeared genuine.
Additionally, he claimed that in 1971, he had personally witnessed a UFO that resembled the object in the pictures. He continued by saying that while watching the 1971 UFO, the power to his pickup had been cut off.
The images have now been sent to Jeff Sainio, a photography expert specializing in deciphering UFO videos and photos, along with a copy of the letter from the purported photographer.
If the images actually depict a UFO, Mr. Sainio, who frequently performs photo analysis for the well-known TV Sightings program, will decide.
Mr. Z’s Letter that accompanied each set of photos
To whom it may concern,
I am writing this letter with much trepidation due to the strange matters which it addresses. Let me first apologize for my anonymity. I am a ‘well known and respected’ member of this community. I remain in the veil of secrecy in order to protect my family and myself from the ridicule which always follows matters such as these.
Enclosed are several pictures which I took on September 16, 1996 from my westernmost pasture. As you can see they show a strange object which hovered for several minutes above my land. Until I actually saw this ‘craft’, I had no belief whatsoever in UfOs or the like. Now I must admit a drastic change in that belief.
I had left the house in my truck around 2:30 to repair some of the fence line on my westernmost pasture. I had my 35mm camera with me because I occasionally took pictures of deer and the like which often grazed in the adjoining pasture. I took my 8 month old beagle ‘Spot’ with me. When we arrived at the fence line I got out of my truck and ‘Spot’ ran out and began running around snifffing the ground etc. I began cutting out a piece of rusted fence with my bolt cutter when ‘Spot’ stared to whine and bark like no dog I have ever heard before. I thought he had gotten stung by a hornet or been bitten by a snake so I went to investigate. He stood about 200 feet from my position and faced towards the south of the fenceline. I ran toward him until I got about halfway there. That’s when I saw what you now see in the photographs. It was a large black object that was hovering over some trees in the horizon. I stood there for a few moments and then remembered my camera. I ran back to the truck, got out the camera and ran to stand next to ‘Spot’. I snapped a few pictures and noticed that it was making a high pitched whistling sound. I guess this was what was making ‘Spot’ howl so. I took a few more pictures as it slowly moved and then hovered some more. At one point it climbed about 4000 feet straight up. It didn’t make a sound and it moved as fast as a lightening bolt. I kept taking pictures until I ran out of film. The ‘thing’ remained in my sight for about another five minutes and then it seemed to crumble in upon itself and vanish. Now let me tell you I was as scared as I have ever been. I shook for a long time after it left. There is one other strange thing I think I should report. About 10 minutes after the ‘thing’ vanished there came three black (or dark green) helicopters which flew low to the ground for a few minutes then left. None of these helicopters had any kind of markings. Now this may not be related, but it just seemed strange.
Well that’s really all I have to say on the subject. You can do with this letter and pictures what you will. I just needed to let someone know what I saw. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Mr. Z
Analysis of the Valley Alabama UFO Photographs
The images were sent anonymously. The photographer claims he did this to protect himself from ridicule and embarrassment.
This may be why it is so hard to find more information about this UFO Encounter.
Jeff Sainio, MUFON’s staff photo analyst, checked the first set of three photographs and was cautiously optimistic about the authenticity of the photos.
“A light area is visible in the middle left of the UFO and appears consistent in all three submitted photos … it is a reasonable presumption that the UFO is evenly lit. The light area, therefore, suggests that the UFO did not rotate between photographs. This limits a fraud mechanism; either a model luckily didn’t rotate, or multiple strings were used to prevent rotation.”
Jeff further observed that “the UFO moves little about the fence post in the foreground, but much in relation “to the distant trees.”
There were six pictures submitted. Only two images would have allowed for a minimal analysis, making it more challenging for photo analysis experts to identify problems with the pictures.
Jeff Sainio mentioned that the six pictures of the object show little movement.
The photographer stated he took the photographs sometime after 2:30 pm on September 16.
The images demonstrate how quickly the mostly cloudy sky is moving.
According to a check with Columbus, Georgia meteorologist John Bateman, from the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 16, around 3:00 pm, Columbus (35 miles south of Valley) had a static front moving in from the west with southerly winds occasionally gusting to over 30 miles per hour.
John’s opinion was that those same winds would also have affected Valley’s weather.
Other witnesses
A woman witnessed a spectacular daytime sighting of a somewhat capsule-shaped UFO on West Point Lake in early May. West Point Lake is only 10 miles from Valley.
She claimed that, like Mr. Z’s purported sighting, the UFO hovered low before shooting straight up “at the speed of lighting”!
Mr. Z had no way of knowing that the flight characteristics of this witness’s UFO were the same as Mr. Z’s.
On July 5, three additional witnesses, a man, his wife, and their daughter, saw a Valley-type UFO in Franklin, just 25 miles north of where the photos are said to have been taken.
They all claimed that it hovered low to the ground, just like the sighting on West Point Lake.
However, the UFO they saw hovered slowly for a long time as it disappeared.
The husband asserted that he was “at least 75% sure” that the UFO he saw was the same one captured on camera in the Valley.
This is significant given that he observed the UFO for almost 30 minutes, five of which he spent within 100 yards of it.
Like the woman on West Point Lake, this report was made public when TV-33 LaGrange aired the Valley photos.
The Westendorff UFO Close encounter
Businessman and pilot Haroldo Westendorff noticed a pyramid-shaped object with rounded ends that rotated about itself without making any sounds or generating any form of smoke on the morning of October 5, 1996, while flying on the EMB 712 Tupi aircraft.
The 12-minute-long incident occurred above Lagoa dos Patos, close to Pelotas.
The pilot reported that the object in the sky was traveling slowly in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean and that the sky was partly hazy.
According to the pilot, the UFO’s base would be the size of a football stadium and approximately 50 meters high. It was pyramidal in shape, with eight sides.
He walked up to the nave from a distance of about 300 meters and noticed that it had eight sides, each of which had projections that looked like windows.
Haroldo Westendorff made radio contacts with the Curitiba Air Space Control Center and the station at Pelotas Airport.
Nobody provided confirmation of the UFO’s appearance on the radars.
Westendorff then started to circle the moving ship.
A disk-shaped object emerged vertically from the dome on the second lap, slanted at a 45-degree angle, and immediately flew in the direction of the sea, according to the businessman present at the time.
The size of the saucer was three times that of the aircraft. The craft then fired crimson beams through the still-open dome as it accelerated and vanished into the sky.
In 2011 during an interview, Haroldo Westendorff confirmed it was the same object shape and color after being presented with the Valley Alabama UFO Photos.
Overview
- Witness Credibility: Good;
- Number of Witnesses: 6;
- Evidence: eyewitnesses;
- Physical Evidence: none;
- Oficial Investigation: none;
- Close Encounter: Second Kind;
- Documents: 0