UFO investigator speaks to standing-room-only crowd at library

Bill Konkolesky, state director of the Mutual UFO Network, spoke to a standing-room-only crowd in the Belleville Area District Library on July 11.
Konkolesky said he has been state director for 15 years and a member for 26 years. He also serves as a consultant to UFO TV, but the stories usually are not accurate.
He said there are 300 billion stars in the Milky Way and one out of six on average has a potential to be a habitable planet. He said there are 100 billion other galaxies currently visible to us with 50 billion worlds that may be capable of supporting life. He said 100 sextillion places have the potential to support life.
He quoted a statement in the Washington Post: “UFOs exist and everyone needs to adjust to that fact.”
He said last May 28 there were sightings of UFOs by pilots and other Navy staff, which brought the discussion of unidentified flying objects to the forefront again.
The USS Nimitz on the west coast had sightings in November 2004 and the USS Roosevelt has sightings on the east side of the country in 2014-15 almost daily. There were no photos or videos from the two ships.
“Something enigmatic is going on,” he said.
He spoke of “Fermi’s Paradox” which is named after Enrico Fermi and refers to the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for such civilizations.
He said MUFON used to have a TV series called Hangar One, but that is no longer running.
Konkolesky gave a report on how many UFO reports they have had since 2010 and it was 2,379 in Michigan alone. Over the past nine years there were 70,617 internationally and 56,183 in the U.S. alone.
He said in 2012, the previous years’ totals of 208 and 279, jumped to 422. He said that was the year Chinese lanterns became popular. Then in 2015 the total jumped to 331, the year drones arrived.
He told the history of Project Blue Book and when it closed its work.
Konkolesky listed investigations of five Michigan cases, starting with the one on Nov. 23, 1953 when a UFO collided with an Air Force F-89 jet fighter out of Kinross Air Force Base, guarding the Soo Locks. The plane was never found and the pilots are considered missing in action. The UFO and the plane collided and then both disappeared from the radar.
One of the pilots is honored with a memorial in Florida explaining he disappeared after colliding with a UFO.
He then told of the 1966 incident in the Ann Arbor area with hundreds of witnesses, a 1975 incident at a northern Michigan Air Force Base, a 1994 incident in Grand Rapids area with coverage on the front page of the Detroit News/Free Press and evidence obtained from the National Weather Service and the March 2005 sighting near Metro Airport.
Konkolesky said at 4 a.m. in March 2005 a man driving in the I-94/I-275 area reported seeing a glowing object, a giant triangle the size of a football field, zipping with lights all over the sky. In the morning he called WOMC morning radio talk show host Dick Purtan. Purtan asked other listeners to call in if they saw this and two more called in.
This followed the sighting Sept. 29-30, 2004 of a UFO landing in Highland Township. He said the guy reported he got up from a nap at 3 p.m. and looked out the window and saw what looked like a car floating over the trees. It landed in his back yard for an hour.
Konkolesky said when he met with the man, he said he was afraid to take pictures for fear they would think he had a weapon and was afraid to call for help. He said he sat on the couch and watched it for an hour and then it went away.
“We came out with antique radar equipment to test the ground, but there was several feet of snow by the time he called and we could get no radiation results,” he said.
The man just wanted to get it off his chest and then he didn’t want to talk about it any more and didn’t want them testing his property any more. He had described the unique shape with three light dots on the side.
Konkolesky said on Nov. 20, 2008 a man driving a truck in Fairland, Oklahoma, reported a UFO with the same shape and three, square windows and the object paced him.
He said there are a couple of hundred sightings of unidentified flying objects a year in Michigan, all over the state. He said where there are more people there are more sightings.
He suggested people report their sightings to mufon.com and contact mimufon.org if they want to become investigators or want more information.
He said the last couple of years the reports are down slightly and he thinks that is because the lengthy report form is hard to fill out on a phone, which is how most are accessing it these days. This means they can’t get the number of UFO reports they used to.
Keith Bruder said everyone has cell phones, so there must be more pictures. Konkolesky said what they offer are pictures of a tiny light in a dark sky, which are terrible photos.
Konkolesky said this presentation is an overall view of UFOs in Michigan, but his other presentation is on the best recent cases. He suggested those interested in having him come back contact the library.
“He was a wuss,” said one man, referring to the UFO sighter who sat on the couch for an hour without calling police.
“He cried on the phone six months later when he called,” Konkolesky said. “He was terrified.”
Konkolesky said now people tend to post their sightings on social media and the replies are fierce.
“When you report it to us, it’s all anonymous. We stipulate that out front,” he said.
“I had a sighting in the late ’80s when I was in a Chevette with buddies,” Konkolesky said. “My two friends don’t talk about it at all.”
A woman asked about human/alien hybrids.
He told the story of a man who was leaving an outstate Walmart and got into his car in the parking lot and a woman with strange eyes got into the passenger seat. “Are you all right?” he asked and she replied, “Are you all right?” and then got out of the car and got into another car with two men.
Later he was sitting on the porch of his house and the car drove up with the three people with strange eyes in it. They got out of the car and told him they were going into his house and he said OK, sure. It was like they were old friends. They stayed inside an hour and then left and he waved a friendly goodbye. Later he realized how strange the whole thing was and how he doesn’t remember anyone saying anything, but they were communicating.
A woman in the audience said when she was four or five her mother woke her up to look out the back window at their home in Fowlerville. They saw a saucer shape, with lights and windows. She remembers staring out at the bright light and, “I don’t remember anything after that… I was a little kid in my PJs, I wouldn’t have gone outside, but I don’t remember anything.”