UFO Club Discussed in Virginian Pilot Newspaper Article
Virginia Beach UFO club takes off
The Virginian-Pilot
© July 10, 2009
By Ricardo Lopez
VIRGINIA BEACH
Mae Burdette knows that when she mentions UFOs and extraterrestrials, her statements often fall on skeptical or even deaf ears.
But at the second meeting of a newly formed UFO Club, Burdette found an audience willing to listen with an open mind.
She told a group of 20 people Wednesday night at the Princess Anne Area Library about her experiences with alien abductions, mysterious men in dark suits and her ability to foresee events, such as a neighbor's house fire.
"The club is about bringing people together and putting their experiences into perspective," said Burdette, 64, who lives in Chesapeake.
Cameron Pack, 25, created the UFO Club so people like Burdette can share their experiences and connect with others who have felt marginalized after speaking about peculiar events.
He began to advertise the club through fliers distributed at local holistic healing stores and in a classified ad. About a dozen people attended that first meeting.
"People have been wanting to have this for a long time," said Pack, a Virginia Beach resident.
Pack, who works part time in retail, is a local field investigator for the Mutual UFO Network. He became interested in UFOs after seeing a triangular object in the sky with many bright lights in 2003.
Pack is passionate about his investigative work. He receives assignments to look into UFOs from his director. He interviews witnesses, collects any evidence and updates the network's nationwide database with a completed report.
Pack carries a briefcase packed with reports, a camera and a field manual on how to conduct inquiries. He is not paid for his work, even though it takes up a lot of his time.
In a little more than a month on the job, he's worked on about 25 cases.
"Cameron is new, but he's very good," said, Susan Swiatek, the network's state director. "We're glad to have him aboard. He writes well, and he writes copious quantities in his reports."
Most of the sightings are reported directly to Mutual UFO Network on its Web site, but some are forwarded by Virginia Beach police dispatch, a practice that began in the 1970s.
A 1976 letter from the Advance Research of UFO Organization to then-Chief of Police William Davis requested that the Police Department forward UFO sighting reports to the organization.
Shortly after, an internal memo sent to dispatchers instructed them to take reports and then call UFO Central to relay the information.
An officer is rarely sent out to investigate, said Sue Frazier, a dispatch supervisor.
Several dozen reports have come in to dispatch since then, and most people never figure out an object and keep silent, Swiatek said.
"When you experience something like that, what you believe to be alien spacecraft, you really start to question yourself," said Terrell Cope-land, a Marine veteran who reported seeing a huge triangle-shape craft floating over a Suffolk shopping center in 2005. "You're just lost."
Copeland said people aren't open to talking about their experiences because they don't want to strain their relationships with work, family or friends.
"This club was necessary because there's nothing like it in the area," Copeland said.
Wednesday's meeting included a diverse group - 20-somethings, senior citizens, a married couple - and all showed genuine interest in hearing Burdette's experiences.
When a pair of men in dark suits approached her at work in 1973 in downtown Norfolk, Burdette said, they knew her husband, where he worked, how many children she had and other personal information. They questioned her, but she became spooked and asked them to leave. They returned a few days later, she said, and requested that she not tell anyone about them.
"Then I saw the movie 'Men in Black,' and I made the connection," she told the group. "I still don't know who they were to this day, but I knew something was suspicious."
By Ricardo Lopez, (757) 222-5125, ricardo.lopez@pilotonline.com
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UFOs on WVEC 13 News in Hampton Roads
View the video of the news segment below at:
http://www.wvec.com/news/local/67620302.html, but be sure to check out the three scanned pages from the Virginia Beach Police UFO file at the bottom of this section.
UFOs: Do you believe?
WVEC 13 News
Reported by: LaSalle Blanks
Monday, April 27, 2009
VIRGINIA BEACH -- There are reports of UFO sightings everywhere, even in Hampton Roads.
A NASA astronaut wants the Obama administration to open government UFO files.
A Virginia Beach man, Cameron Pack, says he's gotten Virginia Beach's UFO files.
He says UFOs exist because he saw one. It was six years ago over a tree near the Virginia Beach amphitheater.
"The thing turns at a 90-degree angle, three white lights in a triangle formation," he recalls.
Pack, a UFO researcher, says Va. Beach Police kept a UFO file for years and he got them in 2004.
"They contain about 70 reports dating back to 1976. These were all obtained under the Freedom of Information Act," he says.
Va. Beach Police say there is no UFO file.
Astronaut Edgar Mitchell was part of the 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission and he walked on the moon. He hails from Roswell, New Mexico, the site of the reputed UFO crash in 1947.
"No, we're not alone," he believes.
Among the widely-studied reports of sightings in Hampton Roads are:
July 14th, 1952 -- a pilot says discs flew over Newport News.
July 16th, 1952 -- in Hampton, an aeronautical research engineer said amber lights raced across the sky.
From the Va. Beach files -- In 1985, a squadron member at NAS Oceana reported an object with flashing red lights flew overhead.
Also in those files is an Elvis sighting.
"It depends on their point of view. Usually people who I've engaged in conversation with either have an open mind or they're very closed by their own beliefs. even if they're an astronomer," says Pack.
"I believe reports like that are over-sensationlized," counters Charles Dibbs with the Va. Beach Planetarium.
"People do see things they can't identify, so UFOs are a real phenomena. Whether you see little green men, there's something else," notes Dr. Robert Hitt with the Chesapeake Planetarium.
Charles Dibbs and Dr. Hitt teach astronomy. They don't believe Earth has ever been visited because of the planet's location in the enormous universe.
“Even just the Milky Way galaxy, with an estimated 400 billion suns, if you imagine looking for a place like Earth, it may be truly such a unique place in the universe that you'd never find it," Dr. Hitt notes.
Pack disagrees.
"That’s one of the favorite arguments that I have heard and I would have to say they're thinking in terms of our own limited understanding of our own technology," he says.
Hollywood makes movies and TV shows about UFOs, but the argument continues about whether close encounters are a fantasy or if, in fact, there has been contact.
Pack says he knows some people don't believe him, but he knows what he saw.
"It was shocking to me," Pack contends.
For Dr. Hitt and other scientists, only facts will do.
"Hopefully, get a picture of one that would give us some ironclad proof," he says.
Both Hitt and Dibbs say they could be swayed.
NASA has launched the Keppler telescope to find planets similar in size to Earth that also have stars. They say Earth-sized planets can sustain life and if Keppler finds any out there, the next step will be to find an atmosphere with those planets.
They say if that happens, space might be a different frontier.
FROM THE VIRGINIA BEACH POLICE UFO FILE
UFO REPORTING PROCEDURE MEMO ISSUED IN 1976 TO VIRGINIA BEACH POLICE DISPATCHERS:
JANUARY 1, 1985 UFO SIGHTING BY NAS OCEANA SQUADRON MEMBER RECORDED BY VIRGINIA BEACH POLICE DISPATCHER:
RECORDS REQUEST REPLY LETTER FROM THE VIRGINIA BEACH POLICE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT OFFICER:
Florida UFOs Interview - On April 8, 2010, Cameron Pack, President of the UFO Club of Virginia Beach was interviewed again by the Florida UFOs Radio Show. You can listen to the interview at the following link: http://floridaufo.planetparanormal.com/?p=60
Our December UFO Club of Virginia Beach speaker, retired Virginia Beach Master Police Officer J. Bonavita discussed his encounters with UFOs while on duty with the Virginia Beach Police Department in the summer of 1975. He told of red and white spheres that were being seen by hundreds of residents in Virginia Beach in early July of 1975. Calls from Virginia Beach citizens flooded the police dispatch center for about two weeks in the summer of 1975. The spheres would be seen…
If you or someone you know has a UFO sighting to report, you can submit it to the Mutual UFO Network, which is the largest UFO investigative agency in the world and a field investigator will contact you regarding your sighting. Please visit: http://www.mufon.com/reportufo.htm to report your sighting or call: 1-888-817-2220. You can remain anonymous if you wish…
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