A gathering of UFO fans in Memphis on Thursday will celebrate the mysteries of the unknown. Bring your curiosity and your x-files.
Lamar Todd, a retired Memphis police officer, stands at a highway off-ramp at I-240 and Norris Road. It’s near a residential area, and just east of a golf course.
Here, on a clear night in 1977, he and his partner observed something very strange.
“There are a number of power lines that cross here... high tension lines,” he says. “It was sitting right above those power lines.”
“It” is the reason that Todd, who still goes by Captain Todd, is somewhat of a celebrity within a certain community of “believers.”
“It was triangular in shape,” he says. “Had three lights on it, no noise to it, there was no engine noise, no jet propulsion.
After about 5 minutes, IT began to move.
“It slowly moved off with no noise,” he says, “then blasted over the horizon in a matter of seconds.”
Captain Todd has retold this story for years: the night he – and several others – saw an Unidentified Flying Object over Memphis. Decades later, it remains the kind of mystery that still intrigues investigators.
Just to be clear, we’re not talking about the FBI or the CIA.
Rather, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). Each state has its own chapter of UFO enthusiasts trying to figure out what's really up there.
“The evidence is just everywhere, just overwhelming,” says Eddie Middleton, MUFON’s director for Tennessee. “All one has to do is just do a little investigation.”
Middleton says that MUFON receives at least one report of a UFO each week.
“My experience has been that the great majority of reports we get are the real thing, classified as ‘unknown’,” Middleton says.
Unknown, but not necessarily aliens. Sometimes the evidence is too vague to determine anything.
“Most of the time it’s just not that clear,” he says. “You know, the fuzzy light in the sky kind of thing. But we’ve had some good ones.”
Middleton points out that as recently as last February, WMC Action News 5 aired a report of some lights in the sky that couldn’t be identified.
It, too, was described as having a triangular shape.
Some say that Memphis’ proximity to a military base in Millington could either explain why some aircraft are unidentified, or why aliens might be stopping in to visit.
Very likely that will be one of tomorrow’s topics at the first ever MUFON conference to be held here in Memphis.
July 2 is World UFO Day, which is also the anniversary of the alleged flying saucer crash in Roswell, New Mexico.
The day-long festival in Memphis – at Pine Hill Park and Community Center, 973 Alice Ave. – is where Capt. Todd saw his UFO 38 years ago.
Festival organizer Bridgett Sanders says that she expects the gathering to attract more than just the tin foil hat crowd.
“There’s the sci-fi junkies, the comic book fans, the people that have had experiences with UFOs,” she says.
They’ll come to hear guest speakers, watch some movies and enter their pets in an alien pet costume contest.
Yes, Sanders says, there’s room for humor about the whole thing. In fact, she says, humor can even be a talking point, like when Jimmy Kimmel asked President Barack Obama if he had researched the alien situation.
“I can’t reveal anything,” Obama joked, brushing past the question.
“It was kind of hilarious,” Sanders says, “but the fact was, he never denied if there were aliens or not.”
For more information and a schedule of events, visit www.worldufodaymemphis.org.
Stay tuned: WKNO-TV is now working on a documentary called "UFO's Over Memphis: A Close Encounter," airing 9 p.m. July 30 and 10 p.m. Aug. 9.
