The Pantagraph from Bloomington, Illinois • Page 15

Sunday, Sept. 13, 1992 The Pantagraph CENTRAL ILLINOIS HAS ITS OWN UNEXPLAINED HAPPENINGS at their Fairbury home Jan. 10 for a another game of dive-bomb the humans. The spacemen are obviously far advanced from earthling capabilities in the areas of flight and in their abilities to avoid detection and capture. "It would come close to an airplane light and then zoom away," said Mrs.

Simon. But there were no reports from airplane pilots of any UFO activity in the area on the nights in question. Apparently the saucers are equipped with detection devices. By JAMES KEERAN Pantagraph staff There have been sightings of strange and wonderous things throughout Central Illinois. Never, of course, anything quite as strange and wonderous as a chocaholic woman giving birth to a sugar-coated baby say, or a 150-foot-long electric eel shocking anglers in Lake Bloom-ington.

There was a two-headed calf once up in Livingston County, but it was stuffed, and the newspaper story said so. Several UFOs have been sighted in Central Illinois, as have huge birds and hairy animals walking upright into the night And all were covered with the natural reserve with which (it) TL I sensible Pantagraph reporters are bred But imagine. trrt.si A I J) i I Jan. 10-11, 1978: The Pantagraph reported, that Jeff Jones, 25, and his sister Sally, 18, fit if. low roim a sr.

i (the names herein have been changed to protect the innocent from weird telephone calls) were returning to her rural Cooksville home from a I l'r-j so, I rJon nf ciwawom, -rr, basketball game about 11 p.m. Jan. 8 when they mm III II mjl Cv -L. I I 1 i. II 7 it encountered an unidentified flying object Jones described it as "kinda like a rectangle with one of the longer sides missing." It hovered 50 to 60 feet above ground, emitted a humming sound and had a pair of headlights embedded in front 8-V-( a rT( jrowandi I i Lod About a half hour earlier, Brad Simon, 22; his brother, mm ITr.mom Nin Normal kl (T 'I biw i ar? i i Armwimnn nii Mark, 19; Don Richardson, 19, and two other friends -r H-k urain vanw i i w-t riiiwnnn 11 1 1 turf saw two UFOs near f-pr lfcS0" ss5lk; TC.

I McLean Heyworth -C I Flshar Rntoul (wt i i-io X. -Hh Fairbury while they were returning from Pontiac. Several hours later, five M0H5TER people in the 800 block of East Douglas Street in Bloomington reported explosions and flashing lights, for which there was no official, or unofficial, explanation forthcoming. Two nights later, The Pantagraph reported, Helen Simon and her children, Brad, Mark and Judy, 17, and about 10 others saw a glowing, flying object in the Fairbury area between 9:30 and 11:10 p.m. It matched the two Brad, Mark and the others sighted two nights earlier.

E' VlJ S- 5T! Maficharnpaign ff I "VY W.ldon Deland Tl AsJXr! Elkhart Xontlcelli Savoy These particular UFOs simply flew around rural Central Illinois. in the night sky, sometimes approaching the Troops of scared-to-death teen-agers, person reported yftM it much shorter, KON5TtR 1 1 UFO observers believe that without these devices, which seem to make UFOs invisible witnesses, sometimes retreating. One, said Mark Simon, seemed to have the ability to camping near Farmer City and T. 1 l' I pernaps oniy or 1 ieei uiii. Heyworth, have been chased away 1 radar detection and film and television It ran away when the J.

is boys shined car lights on it The boys left, too, thinking they rather sleep In the safety of their beds at home than the tent in the tall grass with the monster. ascend immediately without swooping like an airplane or helicopter. Mrs. Simon said the UFO she saw emitted an amber glow and sounded somewhat like the humming of a bee. Simple reports, these, of unexplained phenomena.

But what if one of those reporters for the National Enquirer or Weekly World News had gotten these stories? First, the headline in 2-inch letters: SPACE ALIENS TERRORIZE CENTRAL ILLINOIS Then the sub head in half-inch letters: Space visitors dive bomb joy riding farm kids. If you can control your shaking hands enough, turn the page and read on: A squadron of at least three flying saucers are terrorizing eye-witnesses in three separate Central Illinois communities, and no one seems to have an explanation why. Joy-riding teen-agers in the farm burgs of Fairbury and Cooksville, and even their more stade neighbors in the nearby county seat Bloomington, reported seeing the eerie space invaders hovering above their corn and bean fields, and apparently dropping what appear to be exploding bombs near a rail yard. "It definitely was not a helicopter or plane," said Helen Simon, whose sons, Brad, 22, and Mark, 19, were chased by two UFOs two nights before the space aliens hunted the boys down from their weekend retreats by an ape-like monster strong enough to rip a heavy canvas tent to shreds with its bare hands. David Stein of Decatur, a former student of anthropology who's been tracking such sightings for 10 years, is pretty excited about the reports.

Stein has studied the Yeti (abominable snowman) of the Himalayas and the Sasquatch (bigfoot) of the Pacific Northwest Now he can turn his attentions to something closer to home. "People are afraid to talk about it" he said, but "I'd like for people to call or write me." A group of four Farmer City teens first saw the big monkey, described as up to 7 feet tall, on July 9. They all agreed it was gray in color, and did not seem to like having car headlights shined on it Also, they said, it could run fast through very tall grass. Ten to 15 others saw the apeman again the following night and four nights later a cop and his friend were searching the area when they got first hand evidence of its presence. "I heard something running through the grass," said veteran law enforcement officer Johnny Clay.

"I thought once I might have seen a pair of eyes." All the Farmer City witnesses reported seeing eyes glowing at them from out of the dark. Pleat MYSTERIES, next page cameras, more witnesses would be exposed, to their existance and perhaps some sign of identification and home planet may be spotted. Meanwhile, in Bloomington, within hours after the second sighting in the nearby countryside, frightened residents of a Bloomington neighborhood of working class bungalows were rousted from their sleep by the sounds of explosions and flashing lights from a nearby railyard. "Something sounded like it fell off the house," said one woman who was rousted from her sleep by the explosions. Another scared neighbor said she and her husband heard "a bang, or an explosion," while a still another claims to have heard three explosions in the direction of the nearby Illinois Central-Gulf Railroad yard.

Railroad officials in Bloomington and Chicago and Bloomington police denied anything unusual happened in the railyard that night Then there was the summer Blgfoot, or Lit-tlefoot, or the hairy monster invaded Central Illinois. It was July and August, 1970. It was near Farmer City, then Heyworth and finally Waynesville. Several boys on a camping excursion reported seeing a hairy monster, shaped something like a person, but covered with grayish fur. It was in tall grass, perhaps 3 or 4 feet high, and it stood 2 to 3 feet higher than the But they did tell their story to a Farmer City policeman, who investigated and saw nothing but the tent, but he did hear something running through the grass.

A few hours later, somebody else found the heavy canvas tent ripped to shreds. A week or so later, three boys from Rantoul were camping on the banks of Kickapoo Creek near Heyworth when they saw a strange-looking hairy creature walking upright They followed it for a bit and found nothing but "a few half-eaten minnows and some clam shells ripped apart and scooped clean." It was near the site of the Kickapoo Creek Rock Festival three months earlier. Finally, a couple of weeks after the second sighting, three young men from Waynesville reported seeing the hairy monster standing on a hill in a pasture about two miles northeast of Waynesville, a half mile from Kickapoo Creek. Those are the facts as reported in The Pantagraph. But, consider: HAIRY MONSTER TERRORIZES CAMPERS Humanoid eats raw fish and river clams A humanoid monster, walking upright, has been terrorizing kids out camping overnight in.