April 1975 Lumberton, NC - UFO Flap

On my recent trip to Point Pleasant, I was able to score some classic Fate Magazine's. Fate has always been one of my favorites,  covering all of the reasons of high strangeness and the unexplained while featuring some of the most prominent researchers of the day. In fact,  when I had an article picked up and published by them in the mid 2000s, I was so humbled. I still view that as one of my greatest accomplishments as a researcher of writer.  

With that,  in the October 1988 issue, I came across a story about a UFO Flap that occurred in April  1975. With it being somewhat close to my homestead,  I decided to try to do a deep dive on it.  After all, this was a large event,  with multiple sightings over a 3 or 4 day period.  What I found (or didn't find) online was quite surprising.

At first, I found almost nothing.  This was surprising because the story in Fate was detailed and actually contained some valuable information.  Mostly, I found links to a book,  The Lumberton report : UFO activity in southern North Carolina, April 3-9, 1975. Yes,  thethis was published by an aide to famed researcher J. Allen Hynek, who was involved in the investigation.  

Even on pages that feature unexplained stories,  three results are scarce. North Carolina can claim no monopoly on UFO sightings. From the Fayetteville Observer (March 31, 2013) it is encapsulated by a major 3 of 4 sentences.

     "A particularly large sighting, however, took place in Lumberton in early April 1975. Over the course of a few days, eight separate sightings were reported in the Robeson County town, leading some to refer to it as an  alien attack. In this attack, however, no one was hurt. Or even probed."

This again struck me odd, this was one of first widely held sightings with multiple triangle UFOs. I did find a few tweets on the anniversary and a public Facebook post,  but nothing else.  

So why is this strange? Because according to the article in Fate by the author of the above mentioned book, Jennie Zeldman (Boomerang UFOs), there were 57 recorder incidents during this flap and at last 50 were witnessed by law enforcement.  That's an insane amount.  Plus, there was a myriad of different descriptions.  

According to the article there were: 23 V-shaped crafts, 9 spotlights,  11 sightings at or below treetops, 22 silent craft, 10 hovering objects, and 4 sightings with lights and no shape.  This is a take trove of information and information that should be more publicized.  After all,  according to the author of the article,  some of the detailed information was used as inspiration for the classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

For me,  something doesn't make sense with the lack of information online with this story and I plan on doing more research, especially when you consider Fort Bragg is only hop, skip, and a jump away.  

Stay tuned for more information as I receive it.