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UFO's - The Lake Erie Lights - Fate Magazine
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The Lake Erie Lights
by John Lasker
FATE :: Nov-Dec 2008
On a brisk fall night, the crescent moon over Lake Erie is a blood-red orange. In the background, dark waves lap rhythmically onto the beach. It is picturesque in many ways. But the serenity is about to be shattered. Some unknown distance over the lake, several pulsating lights chillingly materialize from nowhere.
The scene is yet another video of the “Lake Erie Lights” posted on Youtube.com. The video was taken not far from the hardscrabble city of Cleveland, Ohio. These lights over blackish waters have locals talking again, some loudly, some in hushed tones. But most are wondering whether a new wave of UFO sightings over the lake with the creepy name is the real thing or a hoax.
“It’s a hot spot,” declares local ufologist Aaron Clark about the beaches of Lake Erie near Cleveland. “Some believe there’s a UFO base on the bottom of the lake.”
There have been more than 20 credible UFO sightings in the area in the last two years, according to Clark, a spokesman for the Cleveland Ufology Project (CUP), which was founded in the 1950s and claims to be one of the oldest UFO-spotting groups in the country, if not the planet.
Historically, the total number of eyewitness accounts is unknown because there are so many of them. Stories of “strange ships” on the lake have been circulating since Ohio was a hotbed of abolitionism back in the 1800s. Ask anyone who lives near the lake: either they’ve seen something odd, or know of someone who has.
For some, what they saw will remain the mystery of a lifetime. For a few others, it will take over their life.
“There’s a pattern here,” says Sam Phillips, a musician who filmed a UFO hovering over downtown Cleveland, just under a mile from the lake, in March 2007. The footage was shown nationwide by CBS News. “There’s a riddle here. And I want answers. I want an explanation.”
Phillips admits he has become obsessive over what he saw. Friends have deserted him. But he adds, “This is not about me.”
Phillips filmed the UFO during a nighttime antiwar rally. He feels the craft overhead has similar ideals as the Cleveland peaceniks. “Our brothers and sisters are going to come down from the universe and humble our ass,” he said that night.
But Phillips isn’t the only local to take the stage in this phenomenon. Many of the recent Lake Erie Lights sightings have been documented by another Cleveland musician, Michael Lee Hill.
Hill’s videos have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, and they have caught the attention of ufologist David Sereda, who put some of the clips in his 2005 documentary Dan Akroyd: Unplugged on UFOs. His latest documentary, From Here to Andromeda, is co-produced by Hill, who created the film’s music.
Hill has also appeared on the History Channel’s UFO Hunters. In the episode, the UFO hunters tested Hill’s blood and that of another apparent contactee. Both had elevated levels of creatine kinase, which is very rare occurrence in one person, let alone two.
“There’s a huge story unfolding here,” says Hill from his home near the shores of Lake Erie. “I’ve had contact my whole life. I remember asking my mother, ‘Why do Santa’s elves keep visiting me?’”
Hill believes these UFOs aren’t just dropping in to catch the sights.
“I think they’re absolutely sending us a message. I believe they are here to help us become a galatic society.”
But skeptics question whether Hill has pulled an elaborate hoax, like the notorious “Haitian UFO” video, which was viewed more than five million times on YouTube before it was debunked by the Los Angeles Times.
After Hill posted one of his Lake Erie UFO videos to fuck_off.com, a popular paranormal discussion board, the thread took an unconvinced slant. Hill claimed he was pointing his camera directly north, over the lake toward Canada. But with the help of a flight tracking map, one skeptic shows that Hill’s camera was more likely pointing west, and was probably filming the incoming flight path of two distant planes in an S-shaped landing pattern. Two airports are in the vicinity of where Hill says he is shooting. fuck_off.com has labeled Hill’s videos a hoax.
Ben Radford, a paranormal investigator and managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, said YouTube and the ubiquity of Internet is fueling a UFO frenzy. “The problem is anyone can post anything and call it a UFO, a ghost, but there’s no filter. You don’t know if that person has a history of hoaxes or mental illness. What happens is a real case is drowned out by a sea of hoaxes, mistakes, or misidentifications.” (continued...)
Read the rest of this article exclusively in the Nov-Dec 2008 issue of FATE.
[link to www.fatemag.com]
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