Wytheville UFO
1987 brought many new things to the world: The Lost Boys, Apple’ First Computer, and Guns N’Roses debut album…brought it also brought an incredible UFO flap to the small town of Wytheville, Virginia. In fact, it got so intense and there were so many different crafts in the area that even Unsolved Mysteries covered the phenomena in one of their episodes.
Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Wytheville was not wht you'd called a bustling place and certainly not a place on the map when it came to legend tripping. But that changed on the morning of October 7th, 1987. Danny Gordon, a local radio reporter, checked-in early with the county sheriff for any news that happened over night. That's when the first tale landed...three Wythe County sheriff's deputies all claimed to have seen a UFO.
Danny decided to cover the piece on the news as an interesting tidbit. But shortly after he finished his spot, the piece sparked an unbelivable response throughout Wytheville. Reports of UFO sighings began to pour into the radio station, WYVE. It was so relentless that the switchboard jammed and Danny had to work to set up a special, dedicated call-in program to cover the calls on October 17th.
This is unique because, at the time, Danny confirmed he was a skeptic. This was good news, it was engaging his audience, and making some waves…but he truly believed there was a terrestrial explanation.
And the one thing they had in common? There was nothing in common. In fact, the sightings ran the UFO gambit…but here are some of my favorites:
A UFO lit up like a Christmas tree with red, green, and white lights
Giant, egg-shaped crafts
Silent, giant black triangles
And something described as “ominous cubes”
Going back to Danny, even after the October 17th special, figured that experimenting or testing new crafts were being tested at Virginia’s Langley Air Force Base. However, he called the base and couldn’t quite come up with anything. So, on October 21st, him and a friend decided to drive out to an area by the town where many of the reports occurred. They hung out for a while, didn’t see anything, until he did…
He reported on Unsolved Mysteries: “We were headed home, after two hours of fruitless searching… And I just happened to look to my left and saw a very unusual object coming across the horizon. I pulled off to the side of the road in a hurry, jumped out, he got out of the right side, and as he got out I noticed the craft coming at me was very large, it had a dome shape to the top of it, and no wings, and had what appeared to be a strobe putting out multi-colored lights on the right side of the craft. As I watched the sky, from the left came the red ball. As the big mothership went into a small skiff of clouds, the red ball docked with the craft… We looked at each other and realized, no pictures. The camera was not in my hand, the camera was not in his hand, and we both knew we blew it.”
So, the skeptic became a believer. He held a press conference the next day to share his experience and shortly thereafter, he found his house broken into. He believed they were looking for the undeveloped photos. When the photos were developed, however, they showed just streaks of vague light.
But, this wouldn’t be the last time the Danny would see something unexplainable. While shopping with his daughter,
Between October-December 1987, more than 1,500 UFO reports would be submitted. No explanation or hot spot theories were ever proposed or discovered.
There is now even a Wytheville UFO fest, commemorating the flap. But, when it comes to Wytheville this isn’t the only strange event that occurred…the Octagon Mansion History Museum is supposedly haunted, the Graham Mansion too (and was covered on Ghost Hunters).
Thanks to Ginny P. for this blogstonishing suggestion!
The header image is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic, and was taken by Flickr User HVargas of Wytheville, VA.