“I am discounting reports of UFOs. Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdos?”
— Stephen Hawking
“If we were being visited, I’m thinking we’d have something better than fuzzy, monochromatic video of objects that apparently reveal themselves only to Navy pilots.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
SKEPTICS VERSUS EXPERIENCERS
For UFO skeptics, witness testimony is less useful than a bag of soggy Cheetos. Not a single eye-witness in the history of ufology has shared an encounter that wasn’t dismissed as something easily explainable.
Deniers start from the perspective that UFO encounters are impossible, regardless of what witnesses claim to see. Even mass sightings and testimony from trained observers get tossed into the same trash bin reserved for “cranks and weirdos.”
So, despite testimony from over 300 witnesses, one of ufology’s most puzzling cases would have faded into obscurity if not for the work of one key figure, meteorologist Jack Bushong.
THE INCIDENT
The case in question took place on the cold and clear night of March 08th, 1994. At around 9 PM, Grand Haven Michigan resident Cindy Pravda paced around her home talking on the phone when she noticed an intense light outside her kitchen window.
At first, Pravda mistook the glow for a full moon. But after a closer look, she noticed four bright lights hovering in a straight line. The lights floated above the treeline in her pasture, with one of them breaking away and shooting off in a flash. Pravda watched the lights for about 30 minutes and never heard any sound coming from the object.
During Pravda’s sighting, fellow witness Holly Graves, a married mother of two, had already retired to bed. She was awakened by her son screaming for his parents to come and look out the window. Graves describes seeing her living room lit up like someone had pointed a spotlight inside it.
Graves and her husband stepped outside and observed a floating chrome cylinder, roughly 300 feet away. The windowless object rotated in a circle and had lights shining down from the bottom.
For dramatic effect, the episode cuts to a 28-year-old audio recording of Graves reporting the UFO to 911. As she describes the sighting, you can hear her excited child screaming in the background.
Police officer Jeffrey Velthouse responded to the Graves’ 911 call. Graves describes himself as a UFO skeptic before the incident. Upon arriving at the Graves’ home his mind raced through possible explanations for the UFOs.
Velthouse then saw two lights moving in a southwest direction that seemed consistent with normal aircraft traffic until one object broke away and moved south in a manner different than any normal aircraft he had ever seen.
ENTER JACK BUSHONG
After dozens of residents called 911 to report their UFO sightings, Ottawa County 911 dispatch contacted the National Weather Service Muskegon office, manned by Jack Bushong. If anyone could get to the bottom of the strange lights in the sky, it was Bushong. The meteorologist was rigorously trained on how to track weather on radar. And part of that training involved identifying types of phenomena that could fool radar systems.
Bushong picked up a large return at about 6000 feet moving at 100mph. It stopped and hovered for 15 seconds before darting to 12,000 feet. That’s when things went crazy. The target split into pieces separated by about 5,000 feet in height.
Bushong says “In all aspects, the object looked like an aircraft. It just did not act like an aircraft.” He describes it as solid, smooth, highly polished and extremely reflective metal.
The objects maintained a triangular formation, with individual pieces darting off in 20-mile intervals before reforming. Bushong says he can’t think of anything in nature which plays follow the leader like that. The most remarkable aspect of the story is the way the UFOs maintained that formation relative to the radar sweeps. Bushong believes that they wanted to be seen, and their precise maneuvers may be a form of communication.
Despite over 300 witnesses in 42 counties, Bushong faced ridicule from his coworkers and the National Weather Service tried to make the story go away. The higher-ups explained away the UFO as a temperature inversion and told Bushong to stop discussing what happened on March 8th.
FOLLOWING-UP ON THE CASE
Now, all these years later, Bushong’s story has a happy ending. With the United States government admitting their own UFO/UAP investigation programs, events like the March 8th mass sighting seem a lot less crazy. The episode ends with Bushong, back on the case, investigating what took to the skies of Michigan on that cold winter night.
Bushong’s work at the National Weather Service office makes this UFO incident tougher for skeptics to write off as swamp gas, conventional aircraft, or mylar balloons. The episode wraps up with Bushong corroborating witness reports with his sensor data. And without getting into spoilers, the experiencers drop some extraordinary claims.
FINAL THOUGHTS
UFO investigation TV shows have a sketchy track record. Way too often, they go overboard in the spectacle and speculation departments. They lack credible voices and treat even the most ridiculous conspiracy theories like stone-cold facts.
Something in the Sky feels like a breath of fresh air when compared to similar programs. It’s one of the better episodes of paranormal investigation TV. Most importantly, the witnesses come across as credible and authentic. While I can’t say what they encountered, I have no doubt they experienced something out of the ordinary.
The March 8th re-enactments help depict what happened that night without coming off like a wanna-be horror flick. Similar shows shoot these creepy flashbacks like scenes from The Conjuring or Close Encounters. It’s hard to stay objective when a documentary turns into a horror or sci-fi flick.
Something in the Sky examines a fascinating mystery without going overboard with conspiracy theories or stepping into the world of woo. So, no hot takes, like aliens were flying over Michigan to abduct humans and mutilate cattle – although one witness describes something no less bizarre.
Something in the Sky is the type of UFO investigation you could share with a skeptical friend. It may not change their opinions about UFOs/UAPs, but it’s a starting point for a healthy debate.
It’s difficult to dismiss what over 300 people witnessed on that cold March night. And Bushong’s radar data doesn’t just make the case more credible, it also adds to the mystery.
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