I'm inclined, having once been a teenager, to think this is made up. But it is worthy of further investigation....
By JOHN KOZIOL
jkoziol@citizen.com
Already well-known throughout the world as being the host of Bike Week, Laconia recently added another item to its resume when a local girl and her boyfriend claimed their car was picked up into the air and then dropped by an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO).
While The Citizen’s attempts to reach the youths were unsuccessful, a Laconia Police Department report states that Off. Adam Batstone responded at 12:17 a.m. on March 21 to the residence of Linda Dutile where he made contact with her daughter, Emily Moore, 18, and Moore’s 16-year-old boyfriend.
Moore, Batstone wrote, was “very upset” and told him that, a short while earlier, she and her boyfriend had been parked at Opechee Park in her mother’s Ford Focus, looking out toward the lake, when “all of a sudden a dark object started to float across the sky in front of them.”
The object passed over them and returned, Moore said, and, when she and her boyfriend attempted to put the car in reverse, “the vehicle started to shake violently and the windshield smashed as though something had hit it and the air bags went off.”
There was no one around, Moore stated, and, upon questioning by Batstone, she said a bird had not struck the windshield.
“They never saw anything actually strike the car, they just saw the dark object in front of them, heard the windshield smash and the car shake violently and all of the sudden it felt like the car had dropped back down into the parking space. Moore said that she knew it sounded impossible or incredible, but that’s what happened,” said Batstone.
Batstone inspected the exterior of the vehicle and found no signs of impact on the windshield, adding that the dirt on the car was undisturbed. A check of the interior showed “no indications that any sort of impact had happened” but the damage on the windshield was “consistent with the cover to the air bag being launched into the windshield when the passenger side air bag had deployed.”
Batstone next went to Opechee Park where he searched the area of the incident but failed to find any evidence — birds, animals or broken glass or lens covers — “to indicate that a collision had occurred.”
In conclusion, “I request this case be cleared due to no criminal aspect,” Batstone wrote.
As of Friday evening, however, the case remains uncleared because of a discrepancy between where Moore told Batstone the incident allegedly occurred and where she and her boyfriend later told UFO investigators it happened — namely the parking lot at Funspot — said Laconia Police Chief Mike Moyer.
Moyer, who spoke with the UFO investigators and who has a copy of the account Moore and her boyfriend gave of the alleged March 20 event, said Batstone will be meeting soon with both of them to ask about the Opechee Park/ Funspot situation.
The testimony of Moore and her boyfriend is available online at the National UFO Reporting Center, www.nuforc.org.
A Funspot representative said nothing like what Moore and her boyfriend described happened at the facility. “It’s a hoax,” the representative said; “it never occurred at Funspot.”
“The long and short,” said Moyer, “is that we got this call to Opechee Park and the officer basically closed the case because there was nothing for us to do; and then I got a call from the UFO guys and they came and took statements and I didn’t realize until yesterday in reading the statement they [Moore and her boyfriend] gave the UFO people the discrepancy in what they told the police.”
There was no mention of a UFO, Moyer said, until the investigators contacted him.
Steve Firmani of the Mutual UFO Network New England, which several online articles reported had spoken with Moore and her boyfriend, was not available for comment.
In his remarks to the NUFORC, Moore’s boyfriend, who is identified only as “D,” said he and Moore went to the Funspot parking lot around 11 p.m. on March 20 because “we wanted to look at the stars.”
“D” said he observed an object that “blocked the moon” and that changed shapes and whose size he estimated to be “as big as 14 houses.” “D” said he attempted to drive away, but “The front end got picked up and the car could not move. We steered left and right but the car just kept going up into the air.”
As the car rose, “D” said, he felt “something” yank his wrist but “Not aggressively” while in his head, “something was telling me ‘Don’t panic,’ or ‘Don’t be scared.’ And it wasn’t in English in my head but I got the meaning.”
There was a smell and “D” said his ears “felt like they kept on popping from the altitude.” The force that was tugging on his wrist, “D” said, then intensified. When the car horn accidentally sounded, the grip lessened, he said, and when the horn beeped again, “D” realized “we were still up in the air! It took 2 seconds for the car to drop.”
“All this took place from 11 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.,” D” said, but “It seemed like we were in the air for 10 minutes and it felt like it was forever.”
Moore, who is identified in the NUFORC report as “E,” recalled seeing “a weird black-shaped object” in the Funspot lot. She, too, recounted there being a smell and also of being “immobilized like I had no control over what I was doing or over my body.” Moore said that, after Batstone left, it was determined that the underside of the car was “totaled.”
Both Moore and her boyfriend concluded their comments by saying they are scared and don’t want to go out at night anymore.
A Laconia police officer for the past 25 years and chief for almost three, Moyer confirmed that his department has in the past received “a couple of reports” of UFOs, although they were never substantiated.
Asked whether there was anything seemingly extraterrestrial in what allegedly happened on March 20 at either Opechee Park or at Funspot, Moyer said there wasn’t.
“We did not put out an APB [all points bulletin] for a flying saucer that night,” he said, adding that, while he has seen UFOs “many times”— things he could not readily identify — he had never seen an alien spacecraft.
“I don’t believe in UFOs. Why do they always come down in a rural area? Why don’t they land in the middle of New York City? The day one lands on the Boston Common is the day I’ll believe.”
Neither Dutile nor Moore was available for comment Friday. Calls to telephone numbers that the women provided to police produced recorded messages saying the telephone numbers were out of service.
In the meantime, Laconia’s alleged UFO incident remains under investigation.
While Chief Moyer does not believe in UFOs, nearly 20,000 hits on the UFO Examiner’s article on the incident shows a lot of other people do.
*************
original report:
Windshield cracked and air bag deployed. MUFON image.
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Two New Hampshire teenagers sitting in a parked car were approached by a black-colored UFO in Laconia on March 20, 2010, lifted into the air and then dropped back onto pavement 180 feet away, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database.
MUFON New England State Director Steve Firmani confirmed his investigation of the case today by telephone and said witness interviews had been completed.
The 18-year-old girl and 16-year-old boy both offer testimony about their encounter.
The two used the girl's mother's car and went to a Laconia destination that has not been released.
"We were just sitting there and I looked up at the moon," the female witness stated. "I saw this weird black-shaped object. And then, I said to my boyfriend, 'What was that?'”
Both accounts describe the same events. They saw an object coming toward them from the sky and began to panic. When they attempted to drive away, the car they were operating was lifted up off the ground. Both describe an odd smell during the incident.
When the car hit the pavement 180 feet away, the windshield cracked and the air bags deployed.
Photo: Asphalt impact area. MUFON image.
Firmani said there was no damage to the body of the car, but that there was about $5,000 damage to the underside of the car.
The male witness descibed the UFO.
"I don’t know how to explain this but it turns into a ball when it wants to slow down and move around quickly and when it wants to go fast, straight, it turns into a flat plate with maze box-shaped lined lights. These were on all the time."
He describes attempting to drive away.
"The front end got picked up and the car could not move. We steered left and right but the car just kept on going up into the air."
When the car hit the ground, they drove quickly away to the girl's home where her mother called the police.
Firmani said there were three-inch divets in the curbing at the impact point where the car hit the ground. He said further study would be made to the under carriage body parts, which MUFON has retained from the body shop.
Laconia is a city in Belknap County, New Hampshire, population 16,411,
This case was originally reported to Peter Davenport at the National UFO Reporting Center. Davenport referred the case to Firmani. The following is the witness testimony from this case.
NH, March 20, 2010 - 2 Witness Accounts (Credit: Peter Davenport - NUFORC). MUFON Case # 22880.
“My name is E and I’m eighteen years old. I live in Laconia. Last Saturday night, my boyfriend D came up to see me and we went out. When we got to (edited), in Laconia, we parked in the back in the separate parking lot. We turned off the car and it was totally silent.
Photo: Asphalt impact area and tire marks in the grass. MUFON image.
We were just sitting there and I looked up at the moon. I saw this weird black-shaped object. And then, I said to my boyfriend, “What was that?”
He looked up at it and he said, ”If it gets any closer, we need to leave.”
I kept staring at the moon to see if it was just a plane or something. It moved back across the moon. It was huge and it looked like it was zig-zagging or changing shape. I couldn’t tell.
He said, “I think it’s coming closer.” It flew so fast over the trees getting closer to where we were. It felt like it was zeroing in on us. It blocked the moon. And then, we started panicking and driving away.
I thought were were going to hit the Bingo building. We turned left but it felt like we went off of a jump – you know that feeling? like we were on a rollercoaster? And we were in the air. I was trying to pay attention to everything that was going on but it felt like I couldn’t. When I looked up, everything was black. The smell was not nice but it was like something you could stand. It was an odor I’ve never smelled before. I heard absolutely nothing – it was silent. I felt immobilized like I had no control over what I was doing or over my body. I could see nothing. It was like opening your eyes in a pitch black room.
I felt really nervous and scared. I don’t remember crying or screaming. I held on to the center console because I felt like I was lifted. I was holding on so tight that my thumbprint is imprinted on the center console.
And then, when I finally realized what was happening, I was so close to the windshield that my body was going forward with my arms behind me. Everything was black. I heard a loud noise like a horn. Once. And then, the car just dropped.
I hit my eye on the dashboard and the airbags came out. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I held my face and I looked over at my boyfriend. I saw that his left arm had blood. I said, “Are you OK?” I looked at the windshield and it was cracked, totally, but only on the passenger side.
I could see D but I couldn’t see anything outside. The only thing that made the car drop was the sound of the loud horn. When the car dropped, there was a loud boom. After that, we just drove so fast out of there. The smell went away after we drove away. And I started crying. And I said, “What the h—l just happened?” My boyfriend said, “I don’t know, I don’t know.” I didn’t feel like they were following us.
When we got home, my Mom said that she could hear me from the outside while I was freaking out. I couldn’t stop crying. My Mom said, “Calm down and tell me what happened.” I said, “You’re never going to believe me.” “Is it my car?” she asked.
And I said, “Let me explain,” because I felt that if I didn’t explain it fast enough, it was just going to go away from my mind.
At about 12:15 am, a cop arrived. I told him what had happened while I was sitting down at the dinner table. My boyfriend was sitting next to me – it was then that I noticed that there was no more blood on his arm or his clothing. The cop didn’t believe me at first until he finished looking at the car. He told my Mom that there was no reason for the air bags to come out because nothing else on the car was damaged. He didn’t check underneath the car but we found out later that the underside was totaled. The cop said that he was going to the place where we had been.
I just felt thankful that we’d gotten out of there. But I couldn’t stop crying for more than 2 hours afterwards. My Mom said, “You should go take a shower and get the airbag dust off of you.” But I didn’t want to be alone at all. I felt lucky. And there were no scratches or anything anywhere on my body.
The first night, my dream was that I was a little girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old, in an Elementary School classroom. I was looking at myself as a little girl. And then it was like the teacher called me up and I couldn’t talk or say anything - but everybody else seemed to say something for me. Like everything I wanted to say, everybody else was saying it except for me. They were saying exactly what I wanted say. I have never had a dream like this before – where I am a little girl and see anything about the past. I did not feel right at all.
I am better now. I still worry about seeing this thing again and I pay attention to the sky at night. I really don’t go out at night, anymore, because I’m scared. “
2nd Witness Account:
My name is D. I am sixteen years old and I live in New Hampshire. Last Saturday night I went out with my girlfriend, who lives in Laconia, when we had the following experience:
I was with her around 11. We wanted to take her Mom’s car because it was nicer and we wanted to go look at the stars. We went to (edited) at the back parking lot in Laconia. There were 8 cars already there when we arrived. Little by little, the cars started leaving one by one. We were the last car in the parking lot. Then the lights of the parking lot and the lights of the houses around us and the lights of the houses down the street started to go out one by one.
Then my girlfriend noticed something blocking the moon and asked, "What was that?" I knew it wasn’t a cloud because it moved back against the wind and blocked the moon again. I don’t know how to explain this but it turns into a ball when it wants to slow down and move around quickly and when it wants to go fast, straight, it turns into a flat plate with maze box-shaped lined lights. These were on all the time.
The colors were dim yellowish white and did not change. I cannot tell whether these were part of the bottom or not. It flipped a lot. I did not know which side was right or up on it. It was doing this over the trees across the street from the parking lot. It suddenly crossed the street towards our car. Its size was as big as 14 houses. It was really quiet. That’s when we had to leave. But I did not have time to turn on the headlights.
We put the clutch in to start the car and jammed it into 1st and floored it. The front end got picked up and the car could not move. We steered left and right but the car just kept on going up into the air. My girlfriend was scared and she had boogers coming out of her nose while I was cursing. The car was going up and the back wheels were off of the ground. Then I looked out of my window and saw that the parking lot park lines started getting smaller. Both our windows were down this whole time. The front windshield started to crack and shake and the cracks spread from the passenger side to the driver’s side. It popped outwards like it was pulled out.
Something yanked my wrist. Not aggressively. And the whole time in my head something was telling me “Don’t panic,” or “Don’t be scared.” And it wasn’t in English in my head but I got the meaning. It wasn’t a language – I don’t know how to explain it. And on my girlfriend’s side, it had her half-way out of the window. Her butt was off of her seat, maybe one-and-a-half or two feet? and the car was pointed almost completely straight up at the stars – yet I saw no stars.
Every time I tried looking at it, in front, a white film went over my eyes. It was kind of like staring at the sun with your eyelids closed. I could not hear her screaming but I know that she was screaming. My ears felt like they kept on popping from the altitude. I couldn’t hear. The smell was like unbearable, like you want to close your nose. It was spicy, like pepper-sprayish, and clean at the same time – it was a smell that you could stand but you would close your nostrils because it still smells bad.
When I tried to fight and get my wrist back in the car, that’s when the grip got stronger. It was pulling my left arm up out of the window – there was no pain but it was strong – …. I was trying to fight off the grip on my wrist. My tongue was numb. The horn beeped by accident and the grip got a little loose. It beeped again in the struggle and my arm flopped down in the car. My girlfriend also fell back in her seat and we realized we were still up in the air. !
It took 2 seconds for the car to drop. When we dropped, the air bags came out. We floored it as fast as we could through the town. It was almost a straightaway to go to my girlfriend’s house with very few turns to take. During this time, both of us couldn’t stop crying. We arrived at her house and her Mom asked, “What happened?” All this took place from 11pm to 12:30 am. It seemed like we were in the air for 10 minutes and it felt like it was forever. Her Mom called the police, and a policeman came.
The policeman did not believe us when we first told him what had happened until he looked at the vehicle. There were no scratches or dents or anything. He said that there was no reason for this to have happened to the car when there are no dents or scratches and no reason for the windshield to shatter and pop out the way it did. He had no explanation for why the windshield popped outwards. Also, when I went to open my cell phone in front of the policemen, I got shocked by it.
On Monday, I went to my doctor to get a whole physical to make sure I was OK. My wrist had a puncture wound while my forearm has a cut that is semi-circular and there’s blood on it. I do remember that when I first looked at my arm after I got it back in the car, it was red with blood. But by the time we got to my girlfriend’s house, there was no blood anywhere. On the center consul of the car, there is an imprint of her hand. I don’t quite understand what the policeman said but it was something about the skin of her hand leaving an impression.
Now, I don’t like to feel bumps in the car, or feel anything that trembles like a boombox. I don’t want to be out in dark areas at night. I also don’t like to walk out to my Mom’s car, anymore, outside. “
