Crownpoint couple spots UFO twice

By John Christian Hopkins
Diné Bureau

CROWNPOINT — It was William Shakespeare, the erstwhile Bard of Avon, who first wondered "What light through yonder window breaks?"

The same question has come once again to New Mexico, and no, not Shakespeare, N.M.

On Wednesday and Thursday nights both between 9:25 and 10 p.m. Stephanie Jeff of Crownpoint reported seeing bright rotating lights appear suddenly in the sky and vanish just as mysteriously.

"It was kind of scary at first," said Jeff, who has never seen anything like that before."They were bright lights, kind of rotating."

The reddish-orange lights first appeared from the west on Wednesday, she said. After about a half hour they vanished.

"I reported it to the Air Force," Jeff said. The following night, she said, there were more planes than usual flying overhead. But about 9:30 p.m. the strange lights again emerged from the western sky. When a plane came too close, Jeff said, the lights went out and never returned.

To make sure she wasn't hallucinating, Jeff said she called her brother, Tony, in Dalton Pass and asked him to look outside.

"He said he saw two lights flying about," Jeff said.

Crownpoint Police Capt. Steve Nelson said no unidentified objects have been reported to the police. He could not remember ever hearing of a local UFO sighting, Nelson said. But Jeff knows she saw somethng.

"It wasn't a star, because it just came right out of the sky. It rotated, and was very bright when it was pointed at us," Jeff said. "And we know what an airplane looks like, we know the difference between the lights on a plane."

Reportings of unidentified flying objects are not uncommon. Some UFOs have been reported by prominent scholars. In 1949, Dr. Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of the planet Pluto, reported seeing a UFO over Las Cruces; four Air Force officers reported an unidentified flying object over Taos in 1952; and several motorists reported seeing a brightly lit space craft land in a field near Springer in 1996.

Reports of UFOs can be traced back thousands of years, even to ancient civilizations like Egypt and Babylon.

Jeff said her husband didn't want her to tell anyone about the unidentified lights. "I bet a lot of people see things, but are afraid to talk about it," Jeff said. "It's kind of cool, though. It's exciting. We'll definitely be watching (Friday night) to see if they come back again."