Strange lights in the sky? Green Bay woman shares her experience as Congress hears UFO testimony.
MANITOWOC – Andrea, a Wisconsin woman who wished to be identified by her first name only for this article, said she tries to keep an open mind about UFOs, but an experience in December 2022 left her searching for an earthly explanation.
“I’m not one to jump (to conclusions) either way,” she told a USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin reporter recently. “I really want to be more careful and figure out all the different possibilities.”
Andrea said strange lights appeared in the sky above her Green Bay home Dec. 1. She first saw them as she was returning to a restaurant a few miles from her house to retrieve her forgotten phone. The sky was dark and cloudy, but several points of light shown from behind the clouds, erratically flying overhead.
As soon as she was home, she used her phone to take videos of the lights and posted them on Facebook, hoping for some answers. Friends and family who saw the post offered several possible explanations. That’s when the work really began.
For weeks after seeing the lights, Andrea searched the sky, sometimes several times a night, to try to see the lights again. But the skies remained clear.
She also drove to several locations known to use spotlights, such as Lambeau Field, Green Bay Botanical Garden and Oneida Casino, but none of those lights looked the same, nor could they be seen from her home.
Eight months later, Andrea said she still doesn’t have answers. But aside from her Facebook post, she hasn’t talked about it to anyone, either.
“We talked about how I only want to use my first name, and I think that comes from how there’s still a stigma around talking about things like this,” she said. “I’m not saying it was a UFO, I’m just saying that there have been a lot of weird things that, if we could talk about it, maybe we could figure out what it is.”
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Little government transparency on UFOs fuels public distrust
Andrea's sentiment was echoed on the national stage during a July 26 congressional hearing by the U.S. House Oversight Committee's national security subcommittee.
During that hearing, three witnesses provided firsthand accounts to the subcommittee members of how they have seen the federal government handle or suppress reports from pilots about strange encounters and unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), things that were previously been called unidentified flying objects.
U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, a Republican who represents Wisconsin's Sixth Congressional District, is chairman of the subcommittee and opened the hearing with commentary on the secretive nature of the federal government regarding UAPs.
"The lack of transparency regarding UAPs has fueled wild speculation and debate for decades, eroding public trust in the very institutions that are meant to serve and protect them," he said at the hearing.
The three witnesses — Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot; Rt. Commander David Fravor, who was among the Navy pilots who spotted a flying object shaped like a Tic-Tac in 2004 and captured the experience on video; and David Grusch, a former Air Force and intelligence official who was a member of a previous Pentagon task force that investigated UAP — answered questions from the subcommittee members for more than two hours July 26.
Their testimonies contained shocking revelations about contact with extraterrestrial life and the government's role in suppressing official reports of UAPs from pilots. It also brought to light the gap in avenues to report UAP sightings for both military pilots and citizens.
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Grusch's testimony, according to a USA TODAY report, was highly anticipated following the explosive interview he did in June with NewsNation in which he accused the Pentagon of a plot to cover up an alleged secretive "crash retrieval" program for vehicles of nonhuman origin.
In that interview, Grusch claimed he became aware of the Pentagon's program that oversaw the collection of up to a dozen alien spacecraft, and in some cases, the bodies themselves of the otherworldly pilots. Those claims resurfaced during the July 26 hearing, with Grusch saying the U.S. likely has been aware of what he characterized as “nonhuman” activity since the 1930s.
Enigma Labs seeks UAP reports from pilots at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh
Enigma Labs, a company based in New York, uses artificial intelligence to evaluate reports of UAPs to determine how credible the report is and if the event can be explained by conventional means.
"A lot of incredible organizations and agencies have faith that this is possible, that AI can be utilized for this purpose and in a helpful way," said Alejandro Rojas, the head of content and research for Enigma Labs. "That we'll continue to learn and improve and make it to where we will be able to get to that maybe 5% of cases that represent something truly anomalous."
Rojas spent most of his time at the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh Fly-In & Convention seeking firsthand accounts from pilots who experienced UAPs. A record 677,000 people attended the July 24-30 event at Wittman Regional Airport.
"We've identified this community (pilots) as an important one for us because, interestingly, the aviation community, in our findings, has more interest in this topic," he said.
Many pilots are also able to use their aviation knowledge to describe the movement of UAPs better than other citizens can, making their reports highly valuable to Enigma Labs.
Rojas said even the skeptics who approached him during the event would relay stories they heard from friends and co-workers about unexplainable experiences they had.
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He also heard many pilots say they had no idea where they can report UAP sightings and that many would rather report to a civilian organization than a government one "because they don't trust their official organizations to treat them fairly and not to ostracize them or potentially have an impact on their career."
Even the Federal Aviation Administration posts on their website that people wanting to report UFO activity should contact an independent reporting center such as the National UFO Reporting Center. They also recommend the activity be reported to local law enforcement if there is concern of danger to life or property.
National saga on UAP reports continues
The congressional hearing from July 26 is the latest in the national saga on revealing the amount of data and intelligence the federal government has about UAPs.
In 2017, the New York Times published a report revealing evidence they had gathered on a secret Pentagon program to study and track UAP reports. Then in 2020, the Pentagon released three videos showing those UAPs.
In May of this year, NASA held a public hearing on UAPs during which Dan Evans, an associate administrator at the space agency, said there is no evidence that UAPs are associated with extraterrestrial life. A final report from NASA's study of UAPs is expected in August.
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July 14, new legislation was introduced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Mike Rounds for an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would require all government records related to UAPs to be disclosed, unless otherwise dictated by a review board.
How do I report a UAP sighting?
There are now multiple avenues people can use to report UAP sightings:
Enigma Labs, also available as a free app in the Apple Store
National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC)
Mutual UFO Network (MUFON)
Alisa M. Schafer is a reporter for the Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter. She can be contacted by email at aschafer@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter: Wisconsin UFO: Strange lights spotted near Green Bay in December 2022
