1973-10-15 - Fayetteville, NC - Light

Missing Time and Military Helicopter

My son was about 1 year old and it was one of the normal evenings when my husband was "out in the field". He was often gone for up to two months at a time, and I felt quite at ease being alone. It was late fall, but the temperature outside was nice enough for me to be able to go outside in my shorts. The "Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson was just going off the air and I was sitting down to watch the "Tomorrow Show" with Tom Snyder. I remember this night because it was the premiere episode. October 15th, 1973.

I could hear a beeping noise coming from outside and thought that it might have been one of the electrical transformers, so I went outside to see if I could find it. There was not a hint of a breeze in the night air and it was fairly cool out. There seemed to be no noise except the beeping. I stood in the yard for a couple of minutes just listening, and then I heard a police siren coming my direction from the main road. I went to the north side of the house to try to see what was happening but was blocked by all the pine trees.

Then I heard a helicopter coming from a distance and that was when I noticed strange lights fairly low to the ground to my east. There should have been no lights in that direction because there was nothing that way except ten to fifteen miles of forest.

I walked down the street about 4 houses to see the main road behind the house and watched as something zoomed by. It was just above the tree line, about 40 feet in the air, and was traveling so fast I couldn’t tell anything specific about it other than it was very well lit. The 2 police cars zoomed by headed south following whatever was flying in front of them. Then came the helicopter. They stopped about a mile down the road, turned off their lights and returned in the direction of Ft. Bragg. I turned around to see the lights in the forest and they were still in the same spot. That was when they lifted to just above tree height and then blinked out. I had no re! ason to be frightened but ran back in to the house anyway. That was when I noticed that the television station had gone off the air. The "Tomorrow Show" should have still been on because I had only been outside for maybe five minutes. I checked the clock and it was now nearly two in the morning. The show came on at 12:30 and went off at 1:30. What had happened to that hour and a half?