FATE Magazine
Jul 2, 20225 min
FATE Sept-Oct 2008, Vol 61, No 8
Bob White found something strange in 1985. He can explain it, and often does, but people don’t take him seriously. That is something he can’t explain. The object he found is metallic, about seven and a half inches long, and resembles petrified wood. What makes it special to White is that he saw it ejected from a strange light…a light he’s certain was a UFO.
“This thing came down out of the sky,” said White, 77, of Reeds Spring, Missouri. “It was glowing like it was on fire. There’s no doubt in my mind it wasn’t anything of this earth. It couldn’t be.”
White took the object to government lab after government lab, including Los Alamos National Laboratory, and after two decades of being brushed off, someone is taking him seriously.
Mark W. Allin of The Above Network (www.AboveTopSecret.com, an Internet discussion board on alternative news topics that boasts 127,794 members) has come to White’s aid, partly because he knows an object like this has been seen before.
It Gets Bizarre
“When you take into account the eyewitness testimony of Bob, who has passed three polygraph tests, this object becomes very unique,” Allin said. “When you add the discovery of a formerly classified military report that describes an extremely similar event that also produced an object that is extremely similar to the Bob White object, it just gets bizarre.”
White is convinced that the object was made by an intelligence not of this earth. “Everything points in the direction of extraterrestrials. Most of the analysis says that this thing is nothing organic from anything in or outside of earth’s atmosphere. There’s no explanation whatsoever.”
Until Allin stepped in, that’s where White’s evidence ended. Although a few scientists have agreed to look at the object, White can’t find one who’ll say what it is, at least, not on the record.
“It’s been analyzed by eight major labs, including Los Alamos [in 1996]. I was told by one of the older scientists it was extraterrestrial, definitely. Then he later denied he said it. His bosses told him not to even talk about it.”
That’s one of the points that intrigued Allin: the mystery. Why have all the labs, all the scientists, given different answers?
“I remembered reading about this thing years ago and wanted to see if anything conclusive had been determined about it. Turns out that Larry Cekander, Bob’s close friend, joined the discussion (on www.AboveTopSecret.com) and told us about all the conflicting reports and test results they had received,” Allin said. “After reading about all of that I decided it might be a good idea to apply the resources of The Above Network toward getting a definitive answer as to what this thing is, where it came from, and how old it is.”
According to a report from Colm Kelleher of the National Institute for Discovery Science, tests conducted at New Mexico Tech in 1996 showed the object was close in composition to a commercial aluminum casting alloy. “There are no anomalies in the results of this analysis,” the report stated.
Friedman Convinced
The test results were good enough for nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman, author of the UFO books Crash at Corona and Top Secret/Majic. “I was very favorably impressed with the testing procedures and results and can’t argue with their conclusion that it was a more or less standard aluminum alloy with silicon and other materials,” Friedman said. “The composition, hardness, density, etc. all seemed to check out. I have no reason to doubt Bob’s story, but see no reason to say that the material is clearly of E.T. origin.”
But White has always contested the New Mexico Tech tests, and The Above Network has enlisted an independent Ph.D. metallurgist who has agreed to analyze White’s object. Allin said he’s not interested in bringing more attention to the object; he just wants to find out what it is and where it’s from. “There is a lot of speculation that the results of some of the previous tests were not presented accurately. By hiring an independent scientist who answers to no one but himself we will be certain the results of his work will be genuine and accurate.”
But after reviewing the results of previous tests, Allin’s independent Ph.D. metallurgist decided in January that more analysis wasn’t necessary.
“The recommendation is not to pursue any additional testing since the object possesses low-quality metallurgic properties, exhibits low-quality processing, and test results show that it originated from the earth,” Allin wrote in an e-mail.
White is not satisfied with the metallurgist’s recommendation. “ATS did not do any tests as they said they were going to. All they did was a review of others.”
Hard Evidence?
White has asked his debunkers, if this is a manufactured object of earth origin, to make one themselves. So far, he has no takers. “As of yet, no reply from anyone,” he said. “So since I am the only man who can make one, I guess this makes me the smartest man in the world, huh?”
Former president of the Institute for UFO Research, Franklin Carter, now a member of the Disclosure Project and the Mutual UFO Network, is familiar with White and is puzzled by the problems he’s faced. “I know he’s had a difficult time in trying to get someone to help him in the UFO community. You’d think with all the clamor for hard evidence, people would be crawling all over themselves to get to it.”
Carter was involved with a UFO contactee conference hosted by the University of Wyoming when he met White.
“I believe his story,” Carter said. “I have no question he found this thing and it fell off something in the sky.”
Carter, who works in the animal pharmaceutical industry, also tried to get a scientist to look at White’s object.
“I had some excellent contacts,” he said. “I talked to some of them about it. ‘Well, we don’t want to get involved in UFOs, but we’ll get you the data’ …I’m still waiting.”
White said the object heats and cools rapidly and picks up radio signals, both AM and FM. And, during a UFO convention in Nevada, it disabled the electronics in a casino’s hotel safe—three times.
“They ordered us not to walk through the casino with it,” White said.
White briefly opened the Museum of the Unexplained in Reeds Spring, with his object as the centerpiece, but didn’t make enough money to keep the museum open.
Things changed for White in 2000 when he received information about a government report from the 1940s made available in 1998 through the Freedom of Information Act. The report, “Flying Saucer from Denmark,” describes an object almost identical to White’s in appearance and composition that was recovered in the 1940s.
“This Thing Was Ejected…”
It wasn’t just the laboratory denial that got Allin and Carter interested in White’s case; it was his whole story.
While driving through Colorado at 2:00 a.m., White and a friend saw a light on the roadside near the Utah border. The light, White said, shouldn’t have been there.
“It was a huge light on the ground,” White said. “The light I saw was the size of a three-story building.”
From the passenger seat, White watched his friend slow the car. “She was scared.”
White’s friend turned off the engine and headlights. “We coasted as close to this item as we could. She didn’t want to stop, but we did.”
They sat in the car, looking at the light. After a while, White’s friend turned the headlights back on.
“Then the thing shot up in the sky,” White said. The light went on to merge with other lights hovering in the sky. “It was two tubular neon lights with a blue light in between. The other light shot across the sky and disappeared in seconds. I know we don’t have anything that moves that fast or that silently.”
As the lights streaked across the sky, another light, small and orange, broke free and fell to earth.
“This thing was ejected from it,” White said. “If this thing had just fallen it would have shot miles from me. It came down at an angle and kind of skimmed the hillside. When I came across it, it was still glowing.”