The Object Returns

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It was a cold night on Fort Campbell in early 1987 when I saw that

Very strange bright object floating over the base's back 40 range area, seemingly pursued by a number of Chunook helicopters as it darted around the sky.

But without much information to go on, and probably like everyone else who saw the same thing I did that night, the incident quickly faded into the back of my mind, and I didn't give much thought after that.

That is,

until I saw it again,

and this time,

it was much closer.

This is the second half of the story of Strange Lights over Kentucky.

I'm Luke Lamana,

and this is Wartime Stories.

For as many strange things as I've seen in my lifetime, especially those during my years in the U.S.

Army, I do take solace in the fact that I rarely seem to find myself alone when such strange things happened.

And that leads me to introduce another old Army buddy of mine, Sergeant Hayslip.

Hayslip was senior to me, having enlisted in the Army long before I did, serving his first enlistment with the 101st Airborne in Vietnam.

After coming home, he had left active service for a time, but ended up re-enlisting and becoming an MP.

Having arrived at Fort Campbell as a radio operator, when I was eventually reassigned to work with the Military Police Division, someone had to train me for my new position, including showing me how to conduct the routine daytime and nighttime security details around the base.

So, as a senior MP, Sergeant Hayslip was assigned as my field training supervisor, accompanying me on most of my earliest night patrols.

During our time working together, he shared a lot of stories with me from his time in Vietnam.

The funny ones, the terrible ones, and even the stranger ones.

For instance, there was one story he told me about the time when his unit encountered a freakishly large python in the jungle.

Apparently this thing was 30 feet long.

I had to bite my lip when he told me that story because it made me want to talk about my own recent experience, something that happened when I was deployed to Honduras.

I hesitated because

after trying to report what my squad had witnessed in that rainforest, I had been thoroughly reprimanded by my chain of command and accused of attempting to file a false report.

Under threat of punishment, I was told to resend my report.

That experience would motivate me to stay quiet about a number of other strange things.

Better to keep my mouth shut than have people think I I was crazy, or worse, a liar.

As such, I was still somewhat bitter about the whole situation, and I also wasn't sure what Sergeant Hayslip might think of me if I told him that story.

I was worried he might think I was just trying to one-up him or something.

Well, if I didn't trust him to believe the stories about my own strange encounters at that moment,

it wouldn't be long before we would both witness something arguably more bizarre than an overgrown reptile.

Bravo 4-7 is

a little bit went over.

Not too hard.

This is Bravo 4-7.

Send it.

What's your current location?

It was now the summer of 1987, several months since I had walked across that parking lot and seen that strange light hovering over the Back 40, being chased around by helicopters.

This evening's evening's patrol found me and Sergeant Hayslip driving along a narrow gravel road in the westernmost region of the base, in the general vicinity south of the artillery range area.

With me behind the wheel, we were now heading east.

The distant light from the residential area of the base and the nearby city of Clarksville was visible along the horizon ahead of us.

We had to use our electric irons to cook it in.

Our OIC, let's just say he was not happy when he caught us.

Did you see that?

Whoa, whoa, stop the truck.

Stop the truck.

Stop, stop, stop, stop.

In mid-sentence, Sergeant Hayslip suddenly stopped talking, before turning to look over his shoulder at the road behind us.

I slammed on the brakes, then turning to ask him why we were stopping.

His head was now out of the window, looking towards the rear of the truck.

Pulling his head back inside, he turned to me, looking both excited and somewhat confused, saying that, while glancing at his side mirror, he had just seen a large bright light drop straight down out of the sky behind us.

He told me that we needed to turn around to go back and check it out.

I didn't see anything, but I shrugged and did as he said.

He was my supervisor, so it was his call.

There, you see that?

Yeah, I do now.

That is so weird.

Now driving west, that far side of Fort Campbell is pretty much open wilderness, and the area beyond the base is mostly uninhabited as well, if not just patches of farmland and rural property.

In other words, it's pretty dark, at least compared to the other side of Fort Campbell where all the city lights are.

And this area had been pitch black the entire time, but

now

something was illuminating the ordinarily dark wooded area to the west.

A light coming from below the treetops ahead of us.

As we drove, Hayslip did say he wanted to call it in, but added that he wasn't certain what to say in his radio report.

I suggested that maybe we should wait until we got closer to see what it was, and he agreed.

We'd just driven through this exact area, down this same road, only about 10 minutes earlier.

after we had checked on one of our security detail assignments a few miles back, this specific location being a 150-foot communications tower.

The radio tower was situated up in a fire break which had been cut through the trees, maybe 250 yards north of the main road that we were driving on.

I began to realize as we got closer that whatever the source of the light, it had to be something very big to be giving off as much light as it was.

That, and it was clearly on the north side of the road, in the direction of where the comm tower would be.

The tower had an access road that ran down the firebreak, which was perpendicular to and intersected the road that we were on.

But before we even reached the entrance to that access road,

something,

the upper portion of a bright pointed object, suddenly became visible over the treetops.

I knew immediately it was the floating cube I had seen earlier that year, if not something identical to it.

As our truck drew level with the fire brake, allowing us to see down the length of it, we finally had a clear view of the object.

Good lord,

Haislip muttered slowly in amazement, leaning slightly out his open window, taking in the unearthly sight.

It was hovering directly above the communications tower, its bottommost corner so close to the tower's top that it was practically touching it.

The entirety of the site around the tower was bathed in the glow of the cube's light.

We could now plainly see the security fence which surrounded the site, as well as the small electronics building at the base of the tower.

My initial impression when seeing it at a distance from the parking lot had been correct.

This thing was clearly massive.

With the tower being 150 feet high, this cube was at least 100 to 125 feet in height, being not quite as large as the tower was tall.

Along with the light radiating from its interior, shining outward from the cube's middle edges were lights, like spotlights, incredibly bright, reaching out maybe a hundred yards into the darkness in all directions.

Unlike my first time seeing it, although the object was again remaining stationary, it wasn't completely motionless.

Now, like some kind of bizarre carousel,

it was slowly spinning in the sky.

It was eerie because for all of its light, its size, and its hovering position in the sky,

it was completely silent.

No sounds of any engines, no electrical humming, nothing.

Since I was a kid, I had been fascinated with technology.

For instance, I spent a lot of time hanging around Radio Shack.

Probably the same reason I chose to work in communications when I enlisted in the Army.

Seeing this this strange object up close, after the initial shock, I felt more curious than I was afraid.

I wondered if maybe this wasn't some sort of new top-secret aircraft.

Without really thinking about it, I lifted my foot off the brake and began to ease our truck onto the tiny access road which led up to the tower, hoping to get a closer look.

Stop!

Oh, sorry.

Hayslip suddenly reached over like he was going to take hold of the steering wheel before telling me to hold our position where we were.

So I put the truck in park and popped my door open about to get out.

I wanted to at least get a better view from outside.

Sergeant, I'm just gonna.

Stop!

You keep your dumbass inside!

Hear me, soldier!

Yes, sir.

Sergeant Hayslip again reacted, quickly grabbing my right forearm, and

now in a very uncharacteristic tone, He barked the first orders I'd ever heard him give.

I'd never heard him speak like that.

He was always very easygoing.

Nothing ever seemed to bother him.

So, oddly enough, despite what we were witnessing, it was his complete change in character that got me worried.

I glanced from the stern look on his face over the cube, then back at him.

He clearly didn't think this thing was harmless.

And it was lucky he stopped me from driving any closer because

he was right.

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Oh, hell!

As we sat there in silence, with our windows down, witnessing God only knows what, A near-deafening burst of a sharp crackling noise filled the air, scaring the hell out of us.

As brilliant arcs of electricity suddenly exploded downward from the bottom of the cube, hitting the tower.

This must have been what I'd seen months before from the parking lot, but from a distance, I thought they'd looked like reddish-orange flames.

It only lasted a second, shooting down and striking the tower, quickly racing down its length to the ground.

The tower's steel framework seemed to almost glow with dancing sparks.

Stopping as quickly as it had started, the area was ghostly quiet once more.

The cube wasn't spinning anymore, though.

It now sat absolutely still in the sky, just yards above the tower.

We kept glancing at each other and then back at the cube as if hoping the other would suddenly offer some reasonable explanation for it.

No!

God Lord.

After about 15 seconds, we jumped again as the air seemed to explode, arcs of fiery electricity again shooting down through the tower into the ground.

When it stopped, the eerie silence returned, but now it was broken by the muffled sound of helicopters off in the distance.

And they were getting louder, coming in our direction.

Chinooks.

We gotta leave.

Let's go.

Yes, sir.

As if coming to his senses, Hayslip suddenly punched my arm to get my attention.

I stared at him in surprise for a second, and then I turned the wheel and gunned the gas, heading back east toward the city lights.

Uh, Sergeant,

you, uh...

you gonna call this in?

No.

Like hell.

No, this never happened.

I didn't see nothing.

Hayslip turned back to face out his window, staring out into the dark.

I'm too close to have my 20 in.

So, uh, do me a favor.

You didn't see nothing either.

Yes, sir.

Hazelip had meant that he was close to meeting his required years of service for retirement from the Army and all the benefits to come with it.

He clearly thought that reporting something crazy like this would affect his upcoming retirement.

With my own disastrous experience in Honduras to speak of, I guess I knew what he meant.

In any case, neither of us had been hurt, and if he wasn't going to mention it, I didn't see why I'd want to mention it to anyone either.

At least it makes for a good story now.

With the communications tower now miles behind us, Hayslip seemed to be doing his best to pretend like it was business as usual.

He directed me down various roads to reach some of our other assigned locations, but he did seem to intentionally avoid any routes that would take us back near the Comtower.

With miles of forest now between us and that location, we couldn't see anything even remotely near that area.

I was almost glad of that, but at the same time, I was silently hoping I could get one more look at it.

I never did.

And from that night on, I've never seen anything like it.

We finished out our shift without any further incidents and returned to the station, never saying a word about what we'd encountered.

As strange as that object was, I still can't say I've ever seen anything that would lead me to believe in such things as Little Green Man, but seeing something like that does stay in the back of your mind.

News certainly didn't travel the same in the 80s as it does now, and it wasn't until just recently that major news outlets and our own government seemed to have openly and unashamedly acknowledged the existence of UFOs, specifically with regard to military personnel seeing them.

However, in the late 80s, it was just over a year after I saw that cube-like object over Fort Campbell that a two-hour live show called UFO Cover-Up aired on television.

I didn't actually see the show until some years later, in the 90s, when it aired back on TV as a rerun.

But about a third of the way into the show, the host introduced two women from Texas Texas that I had never heard of until that point: Betty Cash and Vicki Landrum.

Now, after years of additional TV shows combined with the internet and other media coverage, I can look back in hindsight on their story and say it is remarkably similar to my own experience.

For those who aren't familiar with their story, in late December of 1980, both Betty and Vicki, along with Vicki's grandson Colby, also witnessed a bright cube or diamond-shaped object floating over a forested area area just north of Houston, Texas.

As they were heading home, driving down a narrow two-lane highway surrounded by tall pine trees, they suddenly spotted an unusual light through the trees ahead of them.

first assuming it was a commercial plane coming in to land at an airport.

They quickly realized it was anything but an airplane, as the road they were on brought it so close to the object that they nearly drove right underneath it before slamming on the brakes.

The object may well have been about the size of what I saw, as Betty would later describe it as being as large as a water tower.

Now terrified, acting on what Betty thought might have been instinct, they immediately got out of the car, only to experience an intense heat being emitted from the bright object.

Vicki and her grandson scrambled to get back inside while Betty, probably frozen in fear, remained standing by the car.

Then, the object began emitting a long burst of flame out of its bottom corner.

Now trying to get back in the car, Betty burned her hand on a now scalding hot door handle, then having to use her leather jacket to touch the handle and scramble back into the driver's seat.

The entire exterior of the car had become very hot to the touch.

To make things worse, they couldn't go anywhere.

At some point their car's engine had died, as if the object had somehow shorted out the car's electrical components.

Unable to restart their car, they sat helplessly staring up at it for another 10 to 15 minutes.

I can't blame them, but being God-fearing Christian women, both Vicki and Betty thought this was some kind of supernatural event.

Maybe even the end of the world.

I'm not sure if God would be so obvious about that, but unlike what I saw, this object was clearly more terrifying, as it wasn't completely silent, emitting both a constant shrill beeping sound as well as a whooshing noise of some kind when the flame stopped shooting out of it.

After about 20 minutes, the object began to rise away from them, as much to their surprise, a large squadron of what young Colby would count to be at least 23 Chinook helicopters arrived, flanking the strange object, almost seeming to escort it as it drifted away.

Shaken by the incident, but finally able to start their car, Betty drove them home.

But their trouble was only beginning.

The next morning, Betty, Vicki, and Colby all appeared to be suffering from a sunburn-like skin sensitivity over their entire bodies.

Possibly because she had spent more time outside the car, Betty would be taken to the emergency room and spend the next month in the hospital, as patches of her skin died and fell off, along with a variety of other symptoms of burn injuries.

All three of them would experience a variety of other symptoms similar to those of acute radiation poisoning, such as headaches, nausea, dysentery, as well as their fingernails and hair falling out.

Betty would later be diagnosed with cancer.

According to Colby, who spoke in an interview about his experiences both during and after the encounter, Their injuries are largely what provoked them to report the incident in an effort to find compensation for the mounting medical bills that were difficult for them to pay.

Despite ongoing denials from both federal and military authorities, both the women and Colby were certain the U.S.

military was involved due to the helicopters they saw being marked with United States Air Force.

Of course, these kinds of helicopters weren't uncommon to be seen over Fort Campbell during my day, but I expect they certainly weren't something folks in Dayton would see flying in large numbers over that area of Texas.

The closest military installation might have been Ellington Field, a retired but still in-use Air Force base located 40 miles away.

In support of their story, a local Dayton police officer, Detective Lamar Walker, and his wife would later recount that they also witnessed about 12 of the helicopters flying over the area the same night of the incident.

In an effort to recoup their medical expenses, Betty and Vicki filed a lawsuit in 1986 against the federal government.

Apparently, due to a lack of substantiating evidence for either the helicopters being in the area and and no government agencies admitting to possessing an aircraft resembling the object, their case was dismissed.

Colby stated in his later interview that he does believe the object was involved in some kind of government experiment and that they were just unfortunate to be the only car driving down that back road at the time they encountered it.

And going back to that 1988 TV broadcast, there might be some evidence to these conclusions.

and maybe even to the nature of the objects I saw just over six years later.

Following their testimony of the incident, the host of the show introduced an anonymous man called Falcon, who gave a rather startling statement about what he knew of their encounter.

The cash lander and incident, the craft that was observed, was a

alien craft piloted by military aircraft pilots.

Although they had been trained and were somewhat familiar with the craft, they found that the aircraft did not respond to certain controls.

They radioed that they thought the craft was going to crash.

Standard procedures for the military in a situation where an aircraft was going to crash, the military would send up search and rescue helicopters.

The helicopters were following the craft.

The craft experienced severe problems.

It was thought that the craft was going to crash.

However, this craft did not crash.

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive produced by Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Written by Jake Howard and myself.

Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Acascio, and Whit Lacascio.

Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stiddam.

Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone.

Production coordination by Avery Siegel.

Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden.

Artwork by Jessica Cloxen Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picada.

If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartimestories.com.

Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.

Hey, it's Luke, the host of Wartime Stories.

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