SUBJECT: TAPE REVEALS IMAGE OVER OAK HARBOR SKYLINE FILE: UFO1284


NEWS CLIPPING SERVICE

DATE OF ARTICLE: March 24, 1989
SOURCE OF ARTICLE: Skagit Valley Herald
LOCATION: Mount Vernon, Washington
BYLINE: Mary Barouh
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UFO? TAPE REVEALS IMAGE OVER OAK HARBOR SKYLINE

By Mary Barouh
Staff Writer

OAK HARBOR--It wasn't until 16 year old Alfred Chan watched
his videotape that he saw a barely discernible object hurtling
over the roof tops of the city.
Was it a bird? Was it a plane?
While others who have seen the tape are skeptical, Chan, a
sophomore at Oak Harbor High School, thinks the object might be a
UFO.
"I'm glad to have evidence, because I know there is
something out there," Chan said.
He said he knows his story will be greeted with disbelief,
but he prefers to let people know apparent phenomena from outer
space "can be seen anywhere, even in daylight. And it doesn't
have to be in the deserts of Arizona."
Chan is a member of the ROTC Drill Team at school, and in
his spare time plays basketball and football. He also seeks
information about UFOs in television documentaries and discounts
science fiction movies as "silly."
His father, Dominic, a retired Navy Petty Officer, said he
can't find any logical explanation for the mysterious object and
is willing to believe it's a UFO.
Anyway, "people see what they want to see," when looking at
the tape, he commented on whether viewers are willing to believe
its an object from another world.
The tape shows a small dark object in the lower corner of
the screen that rapidly disappears. Then through the clouds, the
light seems to reflect off the classic shape of a flying saucer,
the type depicted in 1950s science fiction movies.
The whole shadowy scene takes a matter of seconds on the
screen.
Chan captured the unknown shape in the view finder of the
family's new video camera on the afternoon of March 9 at their
Oak Harbor home. He said he was shooting from inside the house
through a window.
He focused the camera on golden clouds to the east and then
panned to other parts of the skyline. Then he played the film to
see how well the camera had performed.
That's when he saw "something there," he said.
Chan called his parents and they agreed there was definitely
something strange about the shape that came and went.
Whether the faint object on the tape is merely a trick of
light, a quirk in the tape or a sighting of a UFO remains to be
seen.
After realizing the tape contained something unusual,
Dominic Chan said like many other people he didn't know what to
do about a possible UFO.
He took the tape to the Oak Harbor Police.
Sgt. Rick Wallace said he couldn't discern clearly the
outline of the object, "but there seemed to be something moving
in the clouds."
Wallace said he has no expertise in identifying this type of
phenomena.
"It could have been something on the tape or the fact the
camera was moving about quite a bit," Wallace said.
Chan also called Whidbey Island Naval Air Station and was
told the base wasn't conducting air operations in the area that
day.
"The Navy doesn't have anything that can do the type of
maneuvers depicted on the tape," said Navy spokesman Howard
Thomas, who has viewed the tape.
"The Navy essentially doesn't have the resources locally to
technically evaluate the tape," he added.
The Air Force used to collect this type of data, but now
refers calls to the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle.
The Chans are now waiting to see if a photo taken of the
images on the TV screen will be clear enough to send for identification at the center. They decided against sending a
copy of the video.
The volunteer organization has optics experts who can help
identify if a sighting is a "natural or man made phenomena or a
UFO," said Director Robert Gribble.
"The center deals with all sightings in North America,"
Gribble said.
The number of calls varies considerably, "but now the center
is handling six per day which is considered slow," Gribble added.
Gribble said that after investigation, "only about 8 to 10
percent of the reports are classified as UFOs."

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