The US Coast Guard's encounter with UFOs in 1988

The US Coast Guard's encounter with UFOs in 1988

On the evening of March 4, 1988, Sheila Baker and her children were driving along the shore of Lake Erie near Eastland (Ohio, near the Pennsylvania state line). At 6:30 p.m., all their attention was absorbed by a large bright object hovering over the lake. It seemed to look like an airship. There were bright lights at each end of it, and the whole thing was swinging like a swing. The brighter of the two lights was like a spotlight. Arriving home, she persuaded her husband Henry to accompany her and the children to the shore.

There, standing on the shore of Lake Erie, they all watched the object together. It was the color of gun steel and obviously huge-Henry later said that it was "bigger than a football field at arm's length." The object didn't make a sound that they could hear. However, in some way it caused the rumble and crackle of the ice, possibly releasing heat. The object began to circle slowly over the edge of the lake, passing almost overhead at an altitude of only a quarter of a mile.

The US Coast Guard's encounter with UFOs in 1988

Nervous, they drove back and began to observe the object from their house. From there, they saw it descend, with its lower edge flashing red and blue lights. More interesting, however, were 5 or 6 bright yellow triangular lights that separated from the side. These lights, hesitating, hung around the main object, and then abruptly separated from it and began to make zigzag movements in the night sky at high speeds. Henry believes that these objects were smaller than a single-seat Cessna aircraft and "flew a distance of up to 80 km above the ice in the blink of an eye." They flew up to the shore, made turns at right angles, and flew up sharply. Some flew over the territory of the nuclear power plant in Perry (Perry Nuclear Plant). One of the Bakers' neighbors also saw this sight and tried to photograph the object (unsuccessfully).

In response to several phone calls, two members of the Coast Guard, Seaman James Powers, and Chief Petty Officer John Knaub went ashore. When they arrived, the triangular objects approached them, prompting them to turn off the vehicle's headlights. The men continued to watch the triangles fly over the lake, one of which accelerated straight at them, and then turned east and up and went next to the parent object. The Bakers returned to the beach and listened to the Coast Guard officers communicating by two-way radio with their base in Detroit. That's what they heard:

... we believe the object is going to land on the lake… There are other objects moving around it. It looks like these small objects are moving at a tremendous speed. The engine noise is not audible and they are very, very low. Keep in mind, this is not from the planet.

The quote:

At the same time, 15 miles to the southeast, near the nuclear power plant in Perry, Cindy Hale was walking her dog. She saw the light of a triangle hovering over her, and her dog began to whine. The triangle flashed with a series of multicolored lights, and she answered it using a lighter. This went on for 30 minutes until the triangle accelerated and disappeared soundlessly.

At a nuclear power plant in Perry in the United States other local residents, Tim Keck, was looking at the stars through a telescope when he saw a bright triangular object. Fortunately, he had a camera with him – a cheap Instamatic 110, which he received as a reward from Burger King, but it worked. He photographed the object before it disappeared soundlessly over the horizon, and managed to capture about half of it before it disappeared from the frame. Due to the peculiarities of the camera, part of the object was outside the frame.

Meanwhile, on the shore of the lake, a large ship almost landed on the ice. Henry Baker continued to listen as Powers and Knaub spoke.: "You have to keep in mind that the object is now illuminating the whole lake with lights and the light is shimmering with different colors." The noise and crackling were so loud that Powers and Knaub had to shout to be heard. Suddenly, triangles began to return one by one and reunite with a large object. The ice hummed louder and louder, and then all the lights went out, the ice stopped making noise, and "dead silence" came. After another 30 minutes, the object was no longer visible. Witnesses can only assume that he went under the ice.

On the morning of March 5, unusually huge chunks of crushed ice were visible at the landing site of the object. On the same day, a Coast Guard representative informed the Bakers that an order had been received from the army and NASA (where Sheila also called) not to conduct further investigation and not to send a snowmobile to the lake to study the ice. This question was "of their level and their competence". They said all information is currently being sent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and facilities in Detroit. For its part, the Wright-Patterson base refused to confirm or deny the existence of any interest in this matter.

The Coast Guard prepared a report on the incident on March 5, 1988, which summarizes the events. The report states that a large object landed a quarter of a mile east of the nuclear power plant and that there were "... 3-5 separate smaller flying objects that moved around it quite quickly. These objects had intermittently flashing red, green, white, and yellow lights. They also had the ability to stop and hang out."

On the night of March 5, Sheila Baker saw, as she decided, the same UFO hovering over the lake, only at a higher altitude than before. The Coast Guard sent a few people, but they arrived too late and saw nothing. The Coast Guard contacted Lost Nation Willoughby Airport, Ohio. The control room operator told them that these "two bright lights" were Venus and Jupiter, which appeared in the sky in close proximity, and the flickering lights were "atmospheric gases." The fact that Baker mentioned not two bright lights, but a large object, does not matter. The Coast Guard quickly prepared a report in pursuit of the description of the initial observation, putting the whole thing under the rug. A number of cases were debunked in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and in other newspapers.

Regardless of what was observed on March 5, the explanation of the events of March 4 with references to Venus and Jupiter does not cause the slightest confidence. The MUFON organization, to their credit, continued the investigation and even posted an ad about the search for eyewitnesses in the newspaper. It worked, witnesses were found, and among them — Cindy Hale, Tim Keck, and others. All these people described the actions of UFOs that night between 10:00 and 10:30 pm, and they all talked about triangles. Bruce Maccabi analyzed a photo from the Kek, determining that an unexplained object was indeed captured on it. Years later, Sheila and Henry Baker didn't change their minds about what they saw.

Surprisingly, according to Hudson Valley UFO researcher Philip Imbrono, on March 4, 1988, that is, on the same night as in Ohio, several witnesses saw a number of triangular objects near the nuclear complex at Indian Point in New York State. Not much was seen, however, and almost nothing is known about the incident.

Taking into account the level of witnesses, the availability of official documentary evidence, photographic materials, as well as the importance of the event itself, the case of the appearance of a UFO over Lake Erie should be considered as one of the most intriguing in modern history. All the evidence leads to the conclusion that:

  • the mind-controlled huge object descended on the ice of Lake Erie;
  • he released several bright triangles that flew in a way that any type of aircraft known to us cannot fly.;
  • these triangles were interested in nearby nuclear facilities and communicated with witnesses who observed them;
  • officials from the Coast Guard were convinced of the importance of the event;
  • the Coast Guard itself was deprived of the opportunity to investigate the incident by the will of higher organizations;
  • this case was successfully removed from the jurisdiction of one of the national security services and the media.

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This is an excerpt from the book "UFOs and the National Security State: Exposing the Cover-Up, 1973-1991" by Michael Dolan


About author:

Ufologist, PhD, blogger, I go on my own expeditions for UFOs. I use scientific methods to investigate the UAP phenomenon

Serg Toporkov

Ufologist, Ph.D., blogger, I go on my own expeditions for UFOs. I use scientific methods to investigate the UAP phenomenon. Write to me


Related tags:

UFOs  US  1988  triangular ufo  Wright-Patterson base  Lake Erie  report  download


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