On this day:
PROJECT HESSDALEN
On January 24, 1984, Project Hessdalen was in full swing in the snowbound Hessdalen Valley, in Norway. The area was home to fewer than two hundred people, many of whom had observed unexplained "lights" in the valley. The lights appeared bluish white when high in the sky, and when they were low, near the ground or on rooftops, they appeared yellow; occasionally they sported a blinking red light at the front and sometimes contained every color of the rainbow. They also varied from a bullet shape, a football shape, a sphere, or an "upside-down Christmas tree."
Five independent researchers, deciding to investigate, gathered together a working committee, an advisory committee, and a colossal amount of equipment: Geiger counters, a magnetometer, a radar unit, a seismograph, and advanced photographic cameras. They began a month-long vigil in the mountains. They aimed laser beams at passing lights, and one light responded by changing its steady blinking pattern to a double "flash-flash" pattern. Recording equipment would inconveniently become incapacitated just minutes before the phenomenon would show up. Three times the lights were captured on the radar screen, though only on every second sweep. One light was tracked at traveling over 19,000 mph.
One witness described watching a light for twenty minutes, saying it was as large as the house it was near, hovering five yards above ground and bouncing up and down like a yo-yo. He thought it was made of glass. Sightings were first noted in the 1940s and noticeably increased in the 1980s. The phenomenon began to blossom late in 1981, and the lights were most often seen in winter. Sightings continue to be reported, though much less frequently.
Text from: Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible, and the Ignored by Juanita Rose Violins, published by Weiser Books, 2009
