Written By: Ken HulseyWhile spending my formative teenage years in Albuquerque, NM, I, along with almost all of my close friends, experienced many strange, and unexplainable events.
On several occasions I, either alone or with my peers, witnessed strange objects in the sky, came in contact with unseen forces, felt unexplained paranoia while in the woods and had other strange experiences that could be considered to be of a paranormal origin.
Teenagers ....... paranoia? Okay, maybe we can write that one off, but believe you me, New Mexico was, possibly still is, the weirdest place that I have ever lived.
There, of course, are many logical reasons for The Land of Enchantment being a vortex of the unexplained. First off, the government does all kinds of top secret work there and secondly, the state is home to large groups of cults, satanists, and other 'new age' religions. All of these groups 'love' New Mexico for the same reason. Privacy. Per capita New Mexico has the smallest population, per square mile, of any state in the union. The reason for this is simple, the state is mostly covered with military land, state parks, and Indian reservations. In Albuquerque for example, the city can no longer expand to the south, because of Kirkland Air Force Base, it can't expand any further east because of the Sandia mountains and likewise north and west because of Indian reservations.
A great area to either conduct secret tests or worship pagan gods.
Either way it is a formula for the weird.
Here are few instances where either my friends or I saw something strange in the sky. In the summer of 1979, while lying in my front yard, I witnessed an object flying at an extreme altitude, far higher than any conventional airplane would fly. I couldn't make out the shape at that distance, but there was something moving up there traveling slowly across the heavens.
What was it? Well, I have always contended that it was some sort of satellite or possibly a Russian spy plane (no doubt taking a peak at Kirtland AFB)........ not a UFO ........ though it could have been, I just can't say.
Later that summer I emerged from my house after dinner to find my friends staring blankly at the Sandia mountains. I asked what was up? and my pals excitedly replied "Didn't you see that?" Of course I hadn't, so they proceeded to tell me that, what they described as a "spinning disk of fire", just flew past the mountain.
Again, I had no explanation for this, but the truly terrified looks on my friends faces told me that what they saw was indeed 'real' and not some product of a overactive boyhood imagination.
This leads me to the case that I wanted to focus on today, an event that I call "The Albuquerque Mystery Light" for lack of a better name.
In the summer following the two prior events, that being the summer of 1980, August to be precise, for a one week period a strange bright light appeared directly over the city. When my mother, my best friend and his father, and myself, first noticed the light we believed that it was a helicopter hovering over the center of town. Only one problem though, it made no noise, and stayed in that exact spot for over an hour without moving.
Being the curious type, I ran to the garage and retrieved my father's army issue binoculars to get a better look. By this time the adults had seem enough and retreated back to their respective homes for an evening of prime-time television.
Upon viewing the object that was hovering over our city, my best friend and I discovered that the 'light' was not a single illumination, but a honey-comb collection of lights.
When my mother came back outside to check on us boys, and the strange object, she confirmed our observation, and became very puzzled by what she saw.
As a side note, she still recalls the event to this day.
Being young adults amped on Coke and Doritos like we were prone to be, we soon grew tired of looking at a light just sitting there, so my friend and I also soon retreated inside for some quality time in front of the TV.
After about an hour or so, I returned to my backyard to once again view the object, but found that it had vanished.
Of course, my family and neighbors were not the only people in Albuquerque who witnessed the object that night and you would expect, the local police department, and the air force base received a mass of phone calls about it that evening.
The event also made the newspaper the next day, with an 'official' explanation for just what was shining so bright in the sky the previous night. The official word from the scientists at Kirtland was that the object was actually the planet Jupiter, which was unusually close to Earth.
Most people bought the explanation, but my buddy and I did not.
Here is the strange part, a few days later, the object appeared again, this time in a different area of the sky, this time over Kirtland.
Once again my best friend and mother were there with me to witness the event. We all took a good long long look through my father's binoculars and saw the same strange honey-comb formation of lights.
If this was indeed Jupiter, then how did it appear and disappear, and switch positions in the sky?
After that none of us ever saw the light again during the next decade.
That would seem to be the end of the story, just another strange light in the sky, just like the ones seen over Lubbock, Texas, or Phoenix, Arizona, nothing more that just that.
However, while trying to search for the original newspaper report about the event online I stumbled across something else even more interesting that may be connected to the story.
It seems that at about the same time as our 'mystery light' was observed, several military personnel at Kirtland reported that a glowing UFO actually landed at the base near a restricted area where nuclear weapons were housed (we always heard that there were nukes stored at the base, and I guess this confirms it).
Here are three separate reports from around the same time:
Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico
8 August 1980
2350 MST
Three Security Policemen on duty in Charlie Sector, East Side of Manzano Weapons Storage Area, observed a very bright light that traveled with great speed and stopped suddenly in the sky over Coyote Canyon. They at first thought the object was a helicopter, but after observing the object perform unusual aerial maneuvers, they felt it could not be a helicopter. The light was observed to land in the Coyote Canyon area. Sometime later they observed the light take off again and proceed straight up at a high speed until it was no longer visible.
9 August, 1980
0020 MST
A Sandia Security Guard was driving east on the Coyote Canyon access road on a routine building check of an alarmed structure. As he approached the structure, he observed a bright light near the ground behind the structure. He also observed an object that he at first thought was a helicopter. As he came closer, he observed that it was not a helicopter, but a round disk shaped object. When he attempted to radio for backup, he found that his radio was not functioning. He approached the object on foot armed with a shotgun, and the object thereupon took off in a vertical direction at high speed.
22 August, 1980
Three other unnamed Security Guards observed a light over Coyote Canyon that behaved in a similar manner as the one seen on 8 August. Coyote Canyon is part of a large restricted test range used by the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, Sandia Laboratories
From - Think About It.com
I can't say that those were the exact dates that we witnessed the strange lights over Albuquerque, but they sound about right. If they are the same dates then it should be noted that the UFO reports listed here all happened later the same nights, after the objects were no longer hovering over the city.
Did that mean that the craft in question simply moved from their observation spot over Albuquerque and landed somewhere on the base?
It would seem so, though I have no evidence to prove that is the case here. For now it is just a strange coincidence. The events may be connected, maybe not.
It does seem that if you connect the dots, my little UFO story from 1980 may have had more to it then I ever realised, that is if you believe that the stories coming out of Kirtland at around that time are truthful.
Unfortunately, we may never know for sure.
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